HunterKiller
by Kohadril
Summary: Bested by a demon, Sam and Dean scramble to find its weakness before it can complete its mission.
1. A Fight to Remember

_Okay, so 's weird need to eliminate certain ways of breaking up chapters has required me to go back over this story. I'm taking this opportunity to correct some of the more obvious and consistent grammatical and syntactical errors, so that I don't feel like I'm wasting time replacing the scene breaks deleted._

Hunter/Killer

Chapter 1: A Fight to Remember

The white light of fluorescent streetlamps spilled into the museum showroom through the street-side windows. Various displays and exhibits cut swaths of shadow across the floor. It was in rooms like this one that shadows seemed to be living things, seemed to shift and change at the edge of vision, only static so long as they were watched.

Dean had not expected it to look so human. Demons as powerful as this one usually had no corporeal shape, and those that did were generally horrific and alien in appearance.

But this was a man, or so it seemed, of regal bearing and features. It was tall, almost as tall as Sam, but thinner. It wore black, with a cloak that was a rich, deep purple. It was dark-haired and its blue eyes were terrifyingly confident. In its right hand it held a long, thin sword that gleamed bloodless in the cold light.

It stood over the decapitated body of a victim, its back to a pedestal on which an artifact had rested only moments ago. The object had disappeared when the demon touched it, destroyed, perhaps, or else transported to another plane. Blood pooled around its feet as it looked down at the brothers. For a long moment, none of the three moved.

"You cannot stop me," the demon said, its voice low and sure. It even sounded human.

"We've heard that before," Dean replied, glancing briefly at Sam to assess his brother's readiness. Sam nodded almost imperceptibly.

In a motion so smooth and fast it was almost inhuman Dean pulled the sawed-off double barrel from beneath his black leather coat, brought it up, and discharged both barrels. The rock salt hit the exhibition podium behind where the demon had been standing. It had vanished.

"What the hell?" Sam's question echoed Dean's thoughts. Dean looked over at his brother. Sam met his gaze in time to see Dean's expression go from frustration to terror.

"SHIT Sam, behind you!" Dean shouted. Sam spun around, dropping backwards onto his butt. The demon's blade passed just inches over his head. He brought his revolver up and emptied all six chambers. He didn't miss even once, but the demon was unfazed. In fact, it was smiling.

"Well done," it condescended. Sam pulled the speed-loader out of his jacket and fumbled to get the cylinder open. The demon knocked the gun away with a swipe of its sword and brought the tip up to Sam's Adam's apple. "Most would be dead already."

Dean hadn't been wasting time, though. He'd pulled an English longsword off of a display and maneuvered himself around behind the action. When guns didn't work, decapitation usually did. Sam saw him coming up behind the demon and made a show of being terrified, scooting backward on his elbows and softly begging for his life. The demon was not fooled.

It whirled around so quickly it could only _be_ inhuman and deftly parried Dean's two-handed swipe. Dean changed tactics; now that this was a sword fight, and not a sneak attack, defense was as important as offense. Switching to one hand with the longsword he drew a long, vicious knife from his belt with his left. It was the same knife he kept under his pillow at night.

As Dean engaged the demon, Sam leapt to his feet and sprinted over to their discarded duffel bag. They didn't know what this thing was, only that it was very, very old, and had a penchant for ancient Christian artifacts, so he grabbed a book of Latin rituals, and dropping down next to the bag flipped to the dog-eared page and began to read aloud.

"In nomino patri et fili et spiritu sancti…" Sam began, looking up at the action every few words to see how Dean was doing.

The demon fought one-handed, its thin blade blocking every swipe and thrust. It moved with practiced ease and attacked rarely, but when it did, it missed only narrowly, catching clothing or drawing a little blood. But Dean fought like no one Sam knew. His style seemed dangerous, even reckless, but that was calculated. He didn't do well when surrounded, but one-on-one? There weren't many people who could best him. Sam hadn't seen Dean with a sword in his hand since before he'd left for college. He had been talented then. He was incredible now. It was beautiful, as much as anything this violent could be, broad vicious strokes and athletic dodges, every move an attack, every perceived opening a trap.

Sam didn't have time to admire it though. He'd gotten to the part of the ritual he had to concentrate for. He had to command the demon to reveal its true name, so that it could be banished.

"Quod nomen tuem est?" he demanded, yelling above the clash of steel and shattering of display cases. The demon leapt backwards over a table, separating himself from Dean. They circled each other, Dean crouched in a predatory stance, the demon standing tall and straight like a knight at a debutante ball. The demon kept its eyes on Dean even as it addressed Sam.

"Foolish little human," the demon mocked. "Do you really think that some obeisant words to a God you don't believe in can compel me to do anything?"

Sam looked at Dean. He was panting and sweating, blood running down his face from a small cut above his eye, his coat in tatters. Sam needed to buy his brother some time to catch his breath.

"Then what harm can it do to tell us your name?" Sam shot back, one hand surreptitiously rummaging through the duffel bag for something, _anything_, they hadn't tried. The demon laughed.

"None." The demon's face was arrogant and its tone was lordly. "But what need have I for a name at all?"

Sam pressed his luck again.

"Why are you here?" he asked. "For the artifact?"

"And to kill all those who have touched it," it answered, its eyes never leaving Dean. Sam tried to calculate what that meant. How many had touched the thing since it had been recovered? Probably dozens.

He tried to keep it talking.

"We didn't touch it, and it's not like we could stop you from leaving. Why are you bothering with us at all?" Sam's hand, deep inside the duffel, wrapped itself around a glass bottle. He drew it out behind his back and searched for a flare gun.

"I get so little time here on Earth. And since so few of those I'm here to kill are worthy fighters," it paused, its lips curling into a menacing smile that chilled Sam to the bone. "I wish to savor this."

Sam found the flare gun. He grabbed the neck of the bottle with his left hand and the grip of the pistol with his right.

"Dean, down!" Sam yelled, lobbing the bottle into the air. Dean dropped back, and the demon did nothing. But then, that's what Sam was expecting. The bottle hit the ground and shattered, spilling clear liquid on and around the demon. It looked at Sam.

"What is this, holy water?" it taunted. Dean flipped a table on its side and took cover. The demon looked confused.

"Gasoline." Sam replied, bringing up the flare gun and firing it at the floor in front of the demon. The room was instantly ablaze and the demon engulfed. Sam almost let himself believe that he'd done it. But in a second that hope was dispelled. The demon walked casually out of the inferno, its clothes not even singed.

Dean launched himself at it. It sidestepped his thrust and struck him open-palmed in the chest with tremendous force. Dean staggered back and dropped to the floor, gasping for air. He tried to get his feet under him and fell again.

"Dean!" Sam yelled from the floor.

The creature turned. Its eyes were on him now.

Sam hurried to his feet but the demon was already there. He didn't feel it, for a moment. The demon's thin and razor-sharp sword went in with so little resistance that it felt like nothing at all. But a little twist from the demon's hand brought Sam's attention to the steel driven through his abdomen. He whimpered in pain, despite himself, feeling the heat of the blood trickling down his pant leg. He looked back up at the thing's face, eyes wide with fear. Its expression was lustful and hungry, deeply discomfiting.

It leaned in and whispered in his ear. "You should be proud of yourself. I haven't had a fight this enjoyable in a thousand years."

Sam burbled, blood coming up in his throat. Out of the corner of his eye could see Dean moving, climbing to his feet, behind the creature. Sam didn't look up. He didn't want to alert the thing.

Somewhat recovered, Dean closed the distance faster than he had any right to be able to. Too fast, however, to be stealthy.

"And that would be the other one, behind me. Resilient," the demon whispered. It moved to withdraw its sword from Sam and found resistance. Sam had grabbed the sword's hilt with both hands. He pulled it into himself. Summoning all his strength he delivered a powerful front kick to the demon's chest with his right leg, forcing the sword out of the demon's hands. Both stumbled backwards.

Sam dropped to the floor in a sitting position, sword still in his gut. He couldn't lie down, because the sword was sticking out of his back. And he knew better than to move it. He did his best to remain upright, struggling to breathe.

The demon turned around in time to see Dean's face as he howled in rage. He brought the longsword down with terrible ferocity on the demon's neck and drove the knife at its chest.

The sword broke. The knife bent. It was as if the thing were living steel.

"Excellent indeed." It seemed genuinely impressed, for whatever that was worth. Dean stood there, green eyes wide, looking at his broken sword and bent knife. What the fuck was he supposed to do? "But now it's over." It moved toward Dean.

Sam was hurt badly, he knew. He had to survive this, if only to save his brother's life.

"W-wait!" Dean said, backing up. "You enjoyed this, right?"

This drew a vaguely amused look that lightened the imperious silence. Dean took it as confirmation.

"Then leave us alive. You know we'll try to stop you from killing the rest of them." There was no way this would work. He was trying to fast-talk a demon. It was the stupidest plan ever. And the only one left. "It's more fun than killing old archaeologists." The demon raised its eyebrows thoughtfully.

"It's not as though you're relevant anyway." It brought itself nose to nose with Dean, as if to smell his fear. "Tend to your brother. I desire a challenge when next we meet."

And then it was gone.

The sword impaling Sam disappeared with it and he fell onto his back with a painful gasp. Dean rushed over, kneeling at Sam's side. He gingerly pushed one arm under his brother's shoulders, lifting him a little. From the blood pooled on the ground it looked bad. He pulled up Sam's shirt to inspect the wound. Sam winced and stared at the ceiling, trying not to look.

"How is it?" he asked anxiously. Dean didn't answer. Sam searched his brother's face. It wasn't fear. It wasn't shock. It was confusion. He looked down just in time to see the wound close itself up into a neat scar.

"That's…different," Dean managed. Sam sat up a little too fast and regretted it. His head spun as he lost blood pressure. He nearly passed out, falling back onto Dean's arm. Sam was out of danger, but badly drained. "Dude," Dean smirked. "Like half your blood is on the floor. Don't be stupid."

"I got the sword away from him by _pulling it into my body_. You don't get to make fun of me," Sam replied, somewhat drowsily.

"Yeah, that move earned you some serious badass points," Dean agreed. "Not that it wasn't _also_ stupid."

"I gave you your shot, Dean. I'd do it again." Sam was right. Dean relented.

"Whatever, Sammy."

"Sam," his brother corrected reflexively.

"Right. Need me to help you to the car, _Sam_?" Dean was merciless. Sam flashed his brother an annoyed look. He tried to rise again, and again found he could not. He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes, summoning up the strength to overcome his pride.

"Yes," he forced, through gritted teeth.

"Yes what, Sammy?" Dean grinned as he threw equipment into the duffel.

"I hate you," Sam muttered under his breath. "Yes, I need you to help me to the car, Dean."

"Well sure, baby bro! All you had to do was ask."

"Next time I'm letting it kill you."

End Chapter 1


	2. Convalescence

Chapter 2: Convalescence

Sam awoke in the hotel room bed, dressed in his boxers and a clean t-shirt. It was 9:53 AM, according to the digital clock on the faux-pine nightstand. They were in Boston. He'd had a vision of a man being decapitated in front of a museum exhibit and that had brought them here just in time to confront the thing that did it. The results of that confrontation had been suboptimal, as the tight soreness of his stomach reminded him.

His last memory was climbing into the Impala. He must have passed out on the way. This led him to the embarrassing realization that Dean had carried him from the car, changed him, and put him in the bed. Dean was going to lord this over him for months.

At least he hadn't ended up in the hospital.

He reached down, under the covers, to feel the wound. He found no bandages, only two small strips of scar tissue, one ventral, one dorsal. It was as though they had been sewn shut years ago.

Sam's attention snapped to the door as someone noisily slipped a card into the lock mechanism. He heard his brother curse as he turned the handle and the door failed to budge. It took him three more tries before a mechanical whirr-click announced his success and the door swung open. Sam looked up at his brother with a mercurial grin. Dean looked down at him.

"Shut up," Dean mumbled sheepishly. He dropped a McDonald's takeout bag on the window-table. Sam decided not to test his luck by mocking his brother. Dean had been known to withhold food.

Sam tried to sit up and winced in pain. Dean noticed this as he draped his coat over a wicker chair. It sported several long gashes that would be tough to mend. He came over and sat down on the other bed, facing Sam.

"How's your tummy?" Dean asked.

"My _tummy_? Are you six?" Sam taunted, unable to resist. He tried to sit up again, and again the pain prevented it. Dean ignored the jibe.

"My _stomach_ is a little sore," Sam conceded

"Let me help you." Dean moved to help his brother up. Sam gritted his teeth as Dean pulled him up against the headboard.

"You OK?" Dean asked. Sam nodded. He looked up at Dean, remembering the vicious strike he'd taken to his sternum.

"How's your chest?"

"Fine, Sam," he said unconvincingly. Sam gave him the skeptical puppy-dog look. It said 'Not only are you lying to me, but your lies are hurtful.' It was absurdly effective.

"Bruised, a little," he conceded. Sam maintained the look.

"Okay, it hurts pretty bad. You want to kiss it and make it better?"

"Not so much, actually. What's for breakfast?"

"Bacon, egg and cheese biscuits and hash browns." Dean dropped the bag into Sam's lap before sitting back down on his own bed. Sam grinned from ear to ear. This was possibly his favorite food.

Wait. What was going on here?

Dean usually tormented him by ordering sausage McMuffins, which he loathed. And he'd barely teased Sam since he'd walked in. He wasn't giving him grief for getting injured, _or_ for his stupid, self-injurious bravery.

"My favorite food? No dressing-down? What's up?" He was genuinely worried. Maybe Dean had learned something about the demon and knew that Sam was dying. There were very few other explanations for Dean acting like a decent human being.

Dean absently rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at his shoes. This was not good. Not good at all.

"I, uh," he started, not quite knowing how to get this out there. "I thought you deserved a break, is all. After last night."

"What?" Sam's fear was mounting. Why did he need a break? Was this going to be one of those 'what would you do with your last week on Earth' type things? Holy shit, maybe he was turning into a demon and Dean was going to have to kill him! He had miraculously healed, right?

"Aw Sam do you really want to hear this?" Dean looked up into his brother's eyes. _What the hell did that mean?_ Sam waited, trying to appear expectant rather than afraid. His eyes bore down on Dean intensely.

"Fine," Dean said, breaking eye contact. He sat there silently for several seconds.

"I'm waiting, Dean," Sam demanded impatiently, not a little fear leaking into his voice.

"Give me a minute, alright!" Dean complained. He ran a hand through his chestnut hair. "I know I gave you a hard time after the fight last night." Sam's mind was screaming terrified obscenities. Dean paused and took a breath. "But I had some time to think about it and I want to say…You did good Sammy."

Sam exhaled volcanically, and a wave of relief passed over him. He wasn't dying. He broke into the world's most exasperated smile.

"You're _proud_ of me?" Sam balked, disbelieving.

"You're bringing me food and laying off the sass because you're proud of me?" He started laughing, which was a painful experience. He winced once more and stopped. He didn't stop smiling, though.

"Yeah I hope that hurts," Dean groused. He looked at Sam, whose grey-green eyes and mischievous smile were intolerably smug. This is what Dean had hoped to avoid.

"That's awfully sweet Dean," Sam joked. But he wasn't letting his brother off the hook just yet.

"Well?" Sam asked. Dean looked up at Sam. He knew the look his brother was giving him. Knew it and hated it.

"Well what?" Dean pretended. Not that that ever worked.

"Well _say it_, Dean," Sam ordered. Dean faked a confused expression. Sam didn't buy it. "You've said it before. Or is it harder to say it to my face?" Dean looked down again, deeply uncomfortable, knowing Sam wouldn't let this drop until he got what he wanted.

"I'm proud of you Sammy!" he spat contemptuously. "There. Is that all?"

"It's Sam. And was that really so hard?" Sam asked before taking a satisfied bite out of his sandwich.

"Yeah. Kind of." Dean grumbled.

"It shouldn't be."

"Yeah, well, actions speak louder than words."

"Louder, maybe, but not more clearly. There are other interpretations for McDonald's takeout and being nice. Like 'I've learned that you're slowly dying from your demonic sword wound and there's nothing we can do to stop it,' for example. Which is not, you know, _unreasonable_."

Dean laughed a little at that, despite his embarrassment.

"It's honestly a little troubling that I can't tell the difference between you trying to say something nice and trying to tell me I'm dying."

Dean put his hands up in surrender. "I get it. Jeez." He got up and headed for the bathroom. "You try to do something nice for a person…" he muttered as he went.

--

When Dean returned, Sam had finished eating. He had, through considerable effort, swung his feet over the edge of the bed and was trying to stand. Dean came over to help, but Sam waved him away.

"Let's see what I can do." With a hand on the nightstand to steady him he managed to get to his feet. He took a few cautious, painful steps before sitting back down, grimacing a little.

"You okay?" Dean inquired.

"Yeah. It's just pain. It gets better the more I work through it."

Dean looked at his brother worriedly. Guiltily. Sam hated it when Dean looked at him like that.

He hated that his brother felt responsible for anything and everything that happened to him. He hated it because it made him feel young and vulnerable. Like little brother Sammy and not like grown-up Sam. He hated it because he knew it meant that Dean would be even more protective for the next few weeks. That he would be paying too much attention to Sam and not enough to himself.

But mostly Sam hated it because he knew what a bitch guilt was. How it could carve out your insides. Leave you hollow. Brittle. _Breakable_. And neither one of them could afford that right now.

Sam put on a smile.

"Hey, it's better than if it were still a gaping sword-wound, right?" Dean's look didn't change. Change of tactics. Change the subject. "Speaking of which, how the hell did I heal up so fast?"

"I think the demon healed you," Dean answered immediately, as if he'd been waiting for the question.

"Why?" Sam asked. He already knew the answer, but he also knew the value of distracting someone from himself.

"You heard it. It had…fun fighting us. And it wants to fight us again." Dean slumped down onto his bed. "I guess it figured it would be more fun if both of us were there."

"That's pretty twisted."

"It's a demon, Sam. It's like, _made out_ _of evil_. They tend to be a little warped." Dean quipped. That brought a smile to Sam's face.

"I can't blame it, though. For wanting to fight us again, I mean. You were on fire. I've never seen you fight like that." Sam continued. "When have you had time to practice with a sword? We don't carry them around."

"No practice, just native talent," Dean answered with an arrogant smirk.

"Bullshit. You took fencing or something when I was at college."

"Nope," Dean assured him. "Not that it mattered. It was just playing with us," he sighed.

"I never got close to landing a hit until you…disarmed it. And when I finally put blade on flesh? Fucking thing turns out to have skin like Superman." Dean's eyes were cast down, dejected. Sam knew how to pull him out of this.

"Don't worry Dean. If things get bad, I'll just heroically fight on despite a life-threatening injury to save your stupid ass _again_." That was quite enough for Dean, who reached over and grabbed Sam's head, pulling him in for a noogie. Sam squirmed ineffectually as Dean applied justice.

"This whole being proud of you thing only goes so far. Do you get me Sammy?"

"Ahhhhg!" was all Sam managed. Dean released him and he fell back on his bed.

"Ow." Sam whined. His brown mop of hair was only marginally more disordered than it had been before the administration of corporal punishment. "I'm injured, man. And still weak from _massive blood loss_. Not cool." He laughed, this time suppressing the wince.

"That's what you get for being a bitch," Dean retorted. Sam mouthed 'jerk' at this but did not say it aloud. He could wait for his vengeance until later, when he could defend himself again. Minutes passed in silence.

They had very little going for them. They had no idea how to stop this thing, or what it even was. It had kicked their asses. Both had been injured, Sam pretty badly. And this was in addition to their day-to-day lifestyle of fraud-funded nomadism and their violent quest for supernatural vengeance.

What's more, they couldn't shake the feeling that something awful was taking shape just beyond the horizon.

But humor was an effective distraction, if only a temporary one. And for a few fleeting moments, Sam and Dean felt better than they had in months, and closer than they had in years. They didn't want to question it.

End Chapter 2


	3. Exposition

_I apologize for posting the first two chapters without any author's notes. There are a few things that need saying. _

_First, I hereby disclaim Sam and Dean and the Supernatural universe they inhabit. I own only what is original to this work._

_Second, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed the first two chapters. Your kind words are always inspiring._

_Third, and most importantly, I'd like to thank Lady Ophelia, or ladyophelia14 as she's known to the livejournal community, for reading and commenting on the betas of the first three chapters. The quality of the finished work is due in no small part to her skills as an editor._

_With that said, here is the third chapter of "Hunter/Killer."_ _I hope you enjoy it._

_Kohadril_

Chapter 3: Exposition

For appearance's sake, Sam had showered and put on his jeans, though he hadn't bothered with footwear. He certainly wasn't going anywhere today. Dean had headed out to find the nearest library while Sam stayed at home and did the internet thing. It was amazing how often these hotels offered complimentary wireless access in their rooms.

It was past noon, and Sam was sprawled out on the bed with the laptop on his chest. Its warmth was soothing against the stiff muscles around the wound. He was making little progress, and was becoming frustrated.

Because of how recently the artifact—which he now knew to be the reliquary in which was kept the finger bone of St. Ansius—had been recovered, all that was really available was news stories. And those only told him who was on the team that uncovered it, not which among them had actually handled it. There were hundreds of potential victims.

It was useful, though, that many of them were here in Boston for the celebration of excavation's success. And the events of last night would certainly force the police to keep most of them around for questioning. Of course, by now the police would have found, among other things, a whole lot of Sam's blood at the crime scene. Sam was pretty sure that his DNA wasn't on file with the authorities, but if it was, there could be a serious problem. Not that they were likely to assume that he was the perpetrator, but Sam and Dean couldn't afford Sam's face on the news.

Sam had written down the names of the three men that could be seen physically touching the reliquary in the pictures accompanying the news articles. One of them, Milo Jacobs, a 45-year old professor of Western Christian Mysticism at Harvard University, had been the victim in the museum. Sam had also written down the names of the five other highest-ranked members of the team, reasoning that they were also likely to have touched it. But he had no idea how to go about dealing with the cheap grad-student laborers that had unearthed it, the technicians who had cleaned, dated, and authenticated it, the museum staff that had placed it in its display…it was pretty hopeless.

Not to mention that even if he had the names and contact information of everyone who had touched the thing, they weren't likely to all stay in one place and let Sam and Dean protect them _en masse_. There was no way to predict which one of them the thing would come after next, and even if they guessed right, they still had no way of stopping it. They were losing daylight and gaining little ground. They needed some answers by nightfall, before the thing could kill again.

Not that Sam had any reason to believe that this thing had to wait until nightfall. That's just usually how it worked with the things they fought.

He crossed his legs, jostling the bed and the laptop in so doing. He was at a dead-end on this front. He flipped to another tab in his FireFox browser window. In this one he was looking up the history of the reliquary. There wasn't much available. Even Wikipedia had provided little information, though Sam was quite sure that more would appear over the next few days. Not that any of it would be useful.

What entries he did find were spare, but contained some potentially helpful tidbits. St. Ansius had been a priest during the first Holy Roman Empire. He was a devoted servant of Charlemagne and the Pope, and was credited with ferreting out hundreds witches and destroying many demons and monsters. After his death, Ansius' remains were interred as is usual for servants of the church. Upon his beatification, one of his finger bones (they didn't say which) had been placed in a reliquary for the founding of a monastery somewhere in Languedoc, France. The monastery had burned down sometime in the 1100s, and where it had originally stood was lost over the centuries. The reliquary was not recovered.

Here too, he was at a dead end, and without a name, he couldn't look up the demon directly. He resignedly flipped the laptop closed and set it on the nightstand along with the notebook he'd been writing in. Dean had told him to rest if he needed to, and Sam did feel pretty tired. Looking up at the aggressively ugly sky-blue ceiling he let his eyelids close.

As had often been the case over the last few months, he found his thoughts hard to chase away. One thought in particular held his attention, a memory playing over and over in his mind, despite his attempts to suppress it.

It had moved so quickly; he hadn't had a chance. He hadn't even seen the sword until it was already in him. Hadn't even felt it until the demon twisted it. It had hurt, but there was more than that. There was the fear of dying, but there was more than that, too.

Something about the way it had looked at him. He was used to seeing a demon cause, and even enjoy causing, suffering and death. But to see true, demonic bloodlust on a face no less human than his own? That was terrifying.

But even that didn't fully explain his preoccupation.

It had…injured him purely for its own pleasure. They hadn't touched the relic. The demon didn't need to kill them. It chose to fight them because it _wanted _to. This wasn't like when he saw it happening to other people. It had happened to him. It had run Sam through with a sword because it enjoyed having power over things weaker than itself. The power it wanted to feel could only be expressed through the infliction of injury and pain. It had looked excited by his pain, ecstatic at his fear.

Sam's body was rapidly replacing the blood he had lost, and the wound had, probably by the demon's own power, healed itself. But Sam could not get back the pleasure the demon had extracted at his expense. He felt _used_. Dirty, somehow.

He remembered feeling helpless at the time, and today's frustrations weren't helping him feel any less so.

As he finally drifted off to sleep his only thought was that he certainly wouldn't tell Dean about this.

----------

Dean had had marginally more success at the public library. He had left figuring out who had touched the relic to Internet Boy, so he could focus on researching the relic itself.

He'd located a text written by one of the professors who had led the team that had excavated the Monastery of St. Ansius. It hadn't told him much (the book was a compendium of Catholic churches and their various reliquaries) in the two page reference, but what it had said was pretty interesting.

Supposedly, the reliquary bestowed powerful gifts on those who touched it. Specifically, it was purported to give people powers to protect themselves from, and also to kill or combat, demons and other evil spirits. The monks apparently kept this pretty much to themselves, because the monastery never became a significant feature of local pilgrimage routes. Only after the fire, only after it was _lost_, had one of the monks who survived revealed the secret.

In a confession before the pope, the monk had said that some evil thing with the face of man had begun to kill his brethren by night, searching for the relic. They had hidden it, and they were monks: none broke their vows to God to tell the creature where the relic was. In its rage, the monk said, it had burned the monastery to the ground. Unsurprisingly, the monk was dead within a week of giving his statement.

The book confirmed what Dean already suspected. The reliquary had been a holy object of great power, one that threatened even the mightiest evil beings. After all, it was the right index finger-bone (Dean's book _had _said which finger) of a priest who had dedicated his life to destroying evil beings.

Something very powerful had been sent to seize it.

And kill those it might have empowered.

The book was in the passenger's seat as Dean sat in the hotel parking lot. He didn't know whether he should go in yet or not. Sam might be sleeping, and as quiet as Dean could be, he had no end of trouble with that damned card-slot.

It was a pretty pathetic attempt at a pragmatic excuse. He didn't want to go in because he didn't want to see Sam. Lately the fact that it hurt him to see Sam in pain seemed to mean that it hurt him to see Sam at all. Even when Sam seemed happy, which was reasonably rare, Dean could tell that it was a show for his benefit.

Like earlier today. Who did Sam think he was fooling? As nice as it had been to be briefly distracted from his guilt by Sam's annoying little brother act, it was just that—a distraction. It hadn't taken the feeling away, and it certainly hadn't resolved anything. Maybe it wasn't meant to. Maybe it was as much for Sam's benefit as his.

Sam didn't like being treated like the junior partner, being worried over and protected. Dean knew that. That was just tough. The big brother protected the little brother. That's the way it _worked_. So Sam was going to have to learn to live with it. It was not as if Dean were going to suddenly decide he was not his brother's keeper.

Maybe Sam felt as responsible for Dean's guilt as Dean did for Sam's pain. Maybe he had as much trouble looking at Dean as Dean had looking at him. There was a thought Dean didn't want to dwell on. The vicious circle of guilt and pain. That sounded like it could be an album title for one of those shitty emo-bands Sam listened to.

Thinking of Sam brought him back to it, the thought he had most recently been trying to avoid (yet another reason it was irrational to be afraid to see him; if he couldn't avoid it when he wasn't with Sam, why did it matter _where _he was?). He could see clear as day Sam's terrified eyes over the demon's shoulder. Hear Sam's pathetic whimper. See him sitting on the ground, taking wet, hacking breaths, a sword sheathed to the hilt in his body.

He could also see the heroic effort Sam had made to wrestle the sword away from the thing. Sam's stupid bravery brought a proud if grudging smile to Dean's face.

But Dean had been unable to kill it for him.

Dean had seen Sam injured before, but he had always, _always_, killed the thing. He knew that he shouldn't feel guilty, that he had done everything he could, but emotions were still not beholden to the rational mind, and could not be dispelled by reason.

He wondered what his father would say. Now _that_ was a rational thought. John Winchester was probably thousands of miles away and Dean was wondering whether he would have been ashamed of him. Sam would have smacked him if he'd known that Dean was thinking like that.

Dean shook the thoughts away, for the hundredth time. They would get over it. They always did. It would just take some time.

With that Dean Winchester worked up the nerve to open the car door and go see his brother.

----------

Dean managed to get the door open on the first try this time, and he stepped inside with a modicum of stealth. Sam was indeed asleep on the far bed, curled up on top of the covers facing away from Dean. From above he appeared to be napping peacefully. That was very good, and pretty unusual.

He kicked off his shoes at the foot of his bed and walked over to the nightstand. He grabbed the notebook Sam had been scribbling in and inspected it.

Dean noted with satisfaction that he'd uncovered more about the relic than Sam had. Though the list of potential victims was better than he'd expected it would be, in that it had more than zero and less than a thousand names on it. Not that he for a moment made the mistake of thinking it exhaustive.

Dean looked over at the clock. It was just after 5:00 PM. He didn't know how long Sam had been sleeping, but he didn't feel the need to wake him. If something happened tonight, they wouldn't be ready for it. There was really nothing more they could do right now.

That realization bugged the crap out of him.

He lay down on his bed and instantly realized how tired he was. As he drifted off to sleep, he tried not to think about the demon, the blood, or Sam's terrified eyes.

----------

Dozens of brown-robed figures sat on folding chairs in the torch-lit warehouse. There was an air of urgency, a restless energy in the room that could only be explained by nervousness. It was good that they were nervous, he thought. They ought to be nervous. So few of them were going to see tomorrow.

He waited until they had all arrived. Centuries of violence had taught him patience and forethought, even in vengeance. As one of those new poets had written, 'revenge was a dish best served cold.'

He laughed inwardly at the foolishness of these insignificant creatures and their little cult, the self-styled monastic order of St. Ansius (oh, how he loathed to hear that hateful name again, in this new century). They had held onto their legends of the reliquary for nearly a thousand years, but had forgotten (or at least, chosen to ignore) why it had been lost to them in the first place. Species with life spans as short as humans relied on history rather than memory. History allowed a degree of selectivity.

They had chosen to see the monster as a legend and the relic as a fact. It was so absurd it could only be the product of learned minds.

Or perhaps they still believed in him, but thought the power of the relic would protect them.

The pretension! The arrogance! To lay their filthy human hands on so powerful a relic in the hopes that it might bequeath to them some portion of its power. They assumed that just because a thing could give them the _power_ to harm him, it would also give them the skill.

Now if one of those hunters had touched the relic, the situation would be far worse. Fighters of their skill, particularly the older one, stood a chance of landing the occasional blow. But it was no matter. The relic was safe now, and the only people on Earth who even had the capacity to harm him were the bumbling incompetents in this room.

He was already there with them, though they could not see him. He was always there, between the veils, hiding among the thin grey curtain-folds that separated life from death. As long as he remembered living he had lived here, in the space between the worlds.

Ah, the hunters, though. That was interesting, wasn't it? He had discerned that they were brothers almost instantly, though he hadn't noticed the younger one's psychic gifts until he'd run him through. In the intervening time, the demon had puzzled out why he was so interested in them, other than the amusement they provided. He realized that there was a way to use the brothers to his own great benefit, to free himself for all eternity of the laborious effort it took to manifest in the physical realm.

Where were they? He did not have a surfeit of time.

As a distant bell-tower chimed eleven, one of the brown-robes took the makeshift podium. This was their leader. This was the one who had organized the excavation and discovered the reliquary. This was the one who had disturbed the peace and exposed the demon's failure of so many years ago.

The demon appeared just as the leader finished his first sentence, directly behind him. He grinned as he flicked the blade of his mirror-bright sword effortlessly through the muscle, sinew and bone of the man's neck.

The crowd gasped as their leader's head fell from his shoulders. They panicked and fled in all directions, which was just as well. The demon appeared where he needed to, killing each and every one of those who had touched the relic and a few others as proximity allowed.

In a few minutes he had killed all the people he'd come for. The hunters had not come and he had no reason to stay any longer. He allowed himself to be pulled back into the in-between place, cursing himself for ever having let the pair escape.

----------

Sam awoke shivering at 8:15 PM with a splitting headache. He knew what he had just seen, but couldn't completely wrap his mind around it. This was not a normal premonition, whatever that meant. Though he himself did not comprehend the nature of his power, some part of him screamed that this was not how it was _supposed _to be.

He had seen the massacre of over a dozen people—through the eyes of the creature that had done it.

It—no, not it, _he_, the thing had definitely once been human—was going to kill those people tonight, at 11:00 PM—and though Sam had never been to Boston before, he knew exactly where it would happen. He reached over to wake up his brother.

End Chapter 3


	4. Unprepared

_Author's Notes:_

_Behold teh disclaimz0rz. You can probably figure out which stuff is mine and which isn't. _

_Three things: _

_First, I'm sorry about the wait. My regular beta was out of town for the week, and it took me a while to find someone who was willing to fill in for her. Believe me when I say that between a week-long wait and an un-betaed chapter, the former is preferable. _

_Second, I'd like to profusely thank all those of you who reviewed the story up to now. It is your praise that makes this all worth it._

_Third, thanks to hakirby for the beta. Your suggestions dramatically improved the quality of this work. I owe you a solid._

_So here's chapter 4, I hope it was worth the wait. _

Chapter 4: Unprepared

"Turn left here."

"How do you _know_?" Dean demanded for something like the fifth time.

"It's like I said. I just do. I don't know how."

Dean did not appreciate Sam's attempts to shut this conversation down. If he was supposed to trust Sam's vision to lead them into their next fight, Dean needed to know what Sam had seen. He needed to know exactly where they were going and what, if anything, Sam had learned about the demon's weaknesses. He needed to be able to _make a plan_.

At the very least Dean needed to know why his brother was trembling through three layers of clothing.

Dean looked at the dashboard clock: 8:45. He sighed heavily and pulled over into an abandoned gas station.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam's voice was very near panic. Dean looked at him with a mix of appraisal and concern, hard green eyes practically ordering Sam to calm down. Sam broke eye contact almost immediately, shifting to a straight-ahead stare through the windshield.

"We don't have time to talk about this now." Sam tried.

"We have over two hours before this thing is supposed to go down. We're not on the highway, so I'm guessing where we're going is in town. And unless you've been giving me the wrong directions all this time, we can't be much more than twenty minutes from wherever it is you're trying to get us to. We've got _plenty_ of time." Dean could be rational when he needed to be. And he was much, much smarter than Sam ever gave him credit for. "So talk."

Sam squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. He clearly didn't want to talk about this, but that was just too bad. Dean wasn't leaving until Sam spilled.

"I thought you didn't like the touchy-feely crap." Sam mumbled.

"I don't. We got creamed by that thing the last time we fought it, and we were both at the top of our games. I don't know where we're going, and as far as I can tell, we still don't have any idea how we're going to kill this thing!" Dean said, allowing the anger and frustration to build in his voice. Dean wasn't nearly as angry as he was acting, but he knew what his brother responded to. Sometimes Sam just needed somebody to kick his ass, to get him out of his own head. "Am I wrong? Did you see something that gave you a hint how to kill it?"

Sam shook his head slowly. He didn't look up.

"Look at me, Sam!" Dean commanded.

Dean suppressed a twinge of guilt himself as Sam tried to comply. For a moment Dean could read pain, desperation, and not a little fear in his brother's eyes. Sam looked down almost immediately, unable to hold Dean's gaze.

The younger man looked tired and weak. His face was pale and he had dark circles under his eyes from inadequate rest. He wasn't close to fully recovered physically, Dean assessed, even if he appeared to be fully mobile again. Dean was sure he'd seen Sam stifling a grimace as he'd hurried them to the car. But the bigger part of this was emotional; something about this vision, Dean presumed, had shaken Sam to his core. Dean needed to know what that was; and whether he knew it or not, Sam needed Dean to know it too.

"What was different about this vision?" Dean asked softly, insistent but sympathetic. Sam clenched his jaw, a sign that Dean had indeed hit very near the mark.

"I…" Sam started roughly, pausing to shake his head as though to dispel a pernicious thought. "I saw the whole thing."

"The massacre? The thing you were babbling about when you were dragging me to the car?" Dean asked. Sam nodded his head. That wasn't good enough for Dean. His reply was caustic. "Well that's got to be why you're so freaked out—you've certainly _never_ seen anything traumatic in a vision before."

Sam hung his head resignedly.

"I wasn't outside of it, like I usually am." Sam's voice was weak and unsure. "I saw it from his perspective. The perspective of the demon."

Dean knew better than to allow his surprise to show. Sam needed his brother to be entirely unimpressed by this, needed Dean to deny it significance. And Dean was more than willing to do that. In fact, he was quite well-practiced at it. He affixed an unaffected expression and looked over.

Sam was hunched, elbows on knees, hands interlaced behind his head, glassy eyes staring through the floor.

"I didn't just see it, Dean. I felt it. I heard his thoughts like they were mine. Felt his sword going through people like I was holding it." He paused before continuing with a tremulous whisper. "I felt his pleasure at killing them."

Sam looked as though he might throw up. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Dean honestly didn't know what to say.

"I'm worried, Dean. I don't know what this means." Sam admitted.

"Look at me, Sam." Dean said again, this time gently. Sam did. Dean looked back earnestly. "It doesn't mean anything. Whatever these visions are, it seems like they show you what you _need_ to see. Maybe you needed to see this through the demon's eyes."

Then Dean picked up on his brother's use of pronouns. "You're calling it _him_. Is that just because it looks like a guy?"

"No. I felt…something in the vision told me that he used to be human." Sam answered, not seeing the relevance.

"Well, that's a start. That's more than we knew before." Dean was encouraged. "What about weaknesses?"

"Touching the relic gives people the ability to harm him, but it doesn't make them better fighters." Sam replied, trying to regain control of himself. "He already got the relic, and neither of us touched it, so that's not useful.

Both fell silent for several long moments.

"Well, we've tried guns, exorcism, fire, and bladed weapons. I doubt electricity would do anything. He laughed at the idea of holy water, so even though we didn't try it on him, I'm guessing it wouldn't work."

"We tried rock salt, too." Sam reminded him. "But he disappeared before it hit him. Maybe he's afraid of rock salt."

"It's worth a shot." Dean was reasonably certain the demon had avoided the rock salt for sport rather than because he was afraid, just as he had deflected Dean's sword strikes despite the weapon's ineffectiveness, but it was better than nothing. "What else?"

"Blessed weapons." Sam ventured.

"No good, my knife was blessed." Dean answered. "And crossroad dirt only works on ghosts. Are we sure he's a demon and not a ghost?"

"He's not a ghost." Sam said with certainty. "Ghosts are trapped on Earth. This thing has to work really hard to manifest here."

"So it's expending energy to be here?" Dean queried. "Sounds like that could be important. Maybe the longer it stays, the weaker it gets."

"Maybe." Sam conceded. Things still looked pretty bleak. "That's not much to go on."

Again the conversation died, and the brothers were alone with their thoughts. Even as he mentally ran through their arsenal, Dean watched Sam out of the corner of his eye. The younger man's expression was searching, as though he were reaching for a distant, foggy memory.

"You remember something else about the vision?"

"Nah…It's just." Sam frowned and squinted, as if to squeeze the memory out. "I feel like I should. Usually I remember premonitions with perfect clarity. This one's foggy for some reason."

"Well, you're still low on blood. Even your freaky head can't be one-hundred percent."

"I'm missing something. I'm sure of it. And I think it's important." Sam sighed in frustration, letting himself fall back against the seat. "Maybe we shouldn't do this tonight."

"You mean go home and let these people die? Are you crazy?" Dean erupted, incredulous. "You're the one who dragged me out here. You saw everything. You know how important this is!"

"But if we can't stop him, we won't do these people any good. And I'm telling you Dean, I've got a bad feeling. Something is very wrong about this." The desperation was back in Sam's voice. He seemed genuinely disturbed. His next words were meek and defeated. "I don't know what I was thinking rushing us out here. I wasn't rational."

"Yeah, well, that hasn't changed." Dean argued. "Even if all we can do is warn them all to run when they show up, we have an obligation to these people."

This time Sam didn't answer. Dean glanced over and his brother looked away. That got Dean's attention. _This was about more than just the vision._

"What is _with_ you, man? First you can't get here fast enough, now you want to run on home?" Dean challenged, letting the question hang for several interminable seconds. Sam just sat there uncomfortably, hiding behind his bangs. Dean waited as long as he could, before adding pleadingly: "Talk to me, Sammy."

At that Sam looked up, and it didn't take long for Dean to read his expression.

"He got into your head, didn't he?" Dean's voice was gentle, his eyes knowing. "You're afraid of him."

A long moment passed in silence. Dean could see his brother struggling, his pride battling against his fears.

Sam nodded his head almost imperceptibly, unshed tears shining in his eyes. Sam was afraid. He was deeply, terribly frightened and neither he nor Dean knew why. It was in the details: something dark and haunting that had lurked in the back of his mind ever since he'd been stabbed. Something from the vision that he couldn't remember.

Something more than wounds and desperation.

_Something unnatural. _

It confused him. Hell, it confused Dean.

"You should be afraid." Dean stared at the side of Sam's face and put a hand on his brother's shoulder, hoping this was what Sam needed. "You just can't let the fear control you."

Sam leaned forward and took a deep breath, trying not to cry.

"DAMN IT!" He shouted as he exhaled, punching the dashboard as hard as he could. Dean recoiled instinctively, surprised. "God fucking DAMN IT!"

"Whoa, there." Dean coaxed as Sam slammed the dashboard again. "The car didn't do anything."

Sam looked up and some of the fear was gone. In its place was anger and determination.

"Sorry." Sam took another deep breath, gathering himself back up.

"Better?"

"Yeah. Let's kill this son of a bitch."

----------

The air was thick and musty and the warehouse glowed warmly in the orange light of already-burning torches.

"Dean, it's 9:30. None of the monks are here yet. Why are all the torches lit?" Sam's voice was wary. The brothers locked eyes for a minute. Realization hit them simultaneously.

"Because it's a trap." Dean groaned.

"That it is." The demon's voice came from behind them. The brothers spun around, and found the creature standing just a few feet from them, regal cloak pulled closed in front, sword un-drawn. Dean brought up the double-barrel and fired. The demon took both barrels full on in the breast and was unharmed. "I presume that is all, then?"

The demon looked disdainfully at the barrel of Sam's pump shotgun. Sam lowered it. "How did you know we'd be here?"

"The same way you knew I would, Sam Winchester. Your vision." The demon answered with an aristocratic smirk. "We have been connected since the moment I drove my sword through your body. I saw everything you saw. I heard your thoughts as you watched. I was there with you, boy, and you didn't even notice me."

"Why come here early? Why face us before the others?" Sam asked, not knowing what else to do.

"You know why." The demon's eyes flicked to Sam's.

This afternoon's vision flooded back in its entirety. Horror gripped him as Sam saw what he had forgotten. The demon intended to use the brothers to empower himself, to forever cut the strings tying him to the in-between place so he could manifest permanently in the human realm.

He had fogged Sam's memory to ensure that they'd come.

"After I'm done with you I'll have all the time in the world to deal with the rest of them."

"What is he talking about, Sam?" Dean asked nervously, keeping his eyes on the demon and trying not to feel completely useless. There was no answer.

Sam held the demon's gaze, transfixed by their connection. The demon was not satisfied with restoring his memory. He wanted Sam to know everything. To understand.

So he showed him.

Sam fell to his knees as the thoughts came, images, sounds, feelings welling up and pressing against the inside of his skull, threatening to break it open.

"Sam!" Dean yelled, dropping down in front of his brother and grabbing him by the arms. He turned around to look at the demon, whose expression was beatific with joy. "_What the hell are you doing to him?_"

"As Aeschylus wrote, 'He who learns must suffer.' He seeks knowledge. I'm giving it to him." The demon smiled at his wit.

The pain wasn't the worst of it, Sam realized, as the thoughts began to align and sort themselves. Centuries of violence played out in front of him. He saw horrors beyond description in the monstrous void of the demon's mind. As he saw more, the pieces began to fit together and then came the worst burden of all: the burden of comprehension. The pain suddenly ceased.

"NO!" Sam shouted as it all became clear. He felt Dean's hands on his arms and saw his brother's worried face and nearly came unglued right there. He grabbed Dean back, determined not to let this thing have his brother. The demon put a hand on Dean's shoulder and pulled him roughly out of Sam's grip.

Before Dean could react he and the demon were gone, the torch-light disappearing with them.

"_Please God no._" Sam whimpered inaudibly as he finally broke, all alone in the dark.

End Chapter 4


	5. Alone in the Dark

_Author's Notes:_

_I disclaim._

_Thanks to all reviewers. I think everybody who sent a signed review got a reply._

_Thanks especially to the lovely and talented A-blackwinged-bird for the excellent beta. If you enjoy this chapter you owe her big time._

_With that, _Hunter/Killer _Chapter 5. _

Chapter 5: Alone in the Dark

Dean awoke in darkness, not for the first time in his life. This time he didn't find himself in pain, so that was something. Well, his chest did still hurt from the bruising strike of the night before, but that wasn't new.

He quickly found that he could not move. This too was something he was familiar with, though he was fairly certain he had never been manacled, spread-eagle, to an elevated table. Demons, he reflected, seemed to have an infinite variety of torture devices and dungeon equipment.

But hey, he wasn't naked. So, awesome.

He struggled against the metal bands and was not surprised by his lack of success. They were tightly clasped, edges digging painfully into his wrists and ankles. He ignored how exposed he felt, how vulnerable. None of that self-help psychology crap about facing his feelings was going to get him out of these cuffs.

Without any significant light, he couldn't determine where he was, or even make out the features of the room. His nose told him where he wasn't, though: he wasn't at the warehouse. Its musty, stale air had been replaced by the warm smell of smoldering wood.

His last memory was of his brother holding on to him back at the warehouse. Sam had gripped him so tightly it had hurt. No, it hadn't been Sam. It had been a shaken, terrified Sammy. Dean hadn't seen his little brother look that lost and desperate since Sam had hit double-digits. That _look_, out of all of the things he had seen in his brief but dramatic life, was both the most gut-wrenching and the most frightening. It was not a good memory.

No wait, his last memory was being torn out of Sam's grip by the demon. And the even more desperate, more defeated, more terrified look on Sam's face as that happened. Okay. That was definitely a worse memory.

"Sammy!" Dean cried out, even though he knew, somehow, that he was alone. There was no answer.

The youngest Winchester was, at best, still back at the warehouse, in every kind of pain. Whatever the demon had done to Sam, it had nearly broken him. Add to that the trauma of having Dean torn out of his arms, especially when he seemed to know what the demon had planned, and it was unlikely Sam was functional. His little brother wasn't weak, but Dean doubted that he was strong enough to deal with all that alone.

There were very few things that Dean would not give to be back there right now to help his brother.

Warmth filled his eyes and he shook his head, taking a shuddering breath, ashamed at his own weakness. He was not crying. He was not thinking about his own trauma, his own loss. He would not allow himself be useless, not allow himself be a victim. Here Dean was, chained to a table in the lair of a powerful demon, and he _still_ saw Sam as the one who needed protection, the one who needed saving.

A cold wind blew across his face like a draft from an open window and his thoughts quieted. He wasn't alone anymore.

"The darkness is good for introspection, Dean Winchester." The hated voice seemed to come from all around him. "Let us share your mind for a while."

Even in the darkness Dean could see the sadistic smile.

----------

Sam scrambled to put himself back together.

He tried to get to his feet, failing several times as sobs buckled him. God, what he had seen! He couldn't suppress the images of carnage and torture the demon had flooded his mind with; images of women skewered on poles and men flayed alive, images of battle in which he saw the demon cut down dozens of armed and able men as though they were children. Bile rose in his throat as he remembered the joy those things had brought the demon; a joy he disgustingly remembered as his own. He nearly threw up.

Then he remembered what the demon wanted with his brother, and saw Dean being pulled out of his arms again.

He threw up.

He was fighting a losing battle against himself, he realized, after failing to stand for something like the fifth time. His heart was racing, his breath shallow and fast. He was dangerously close to hyperventilating, and was already becoming dizzy. His brain wasn't going to let him wait to deal with this until after Dean was safe. It wasn't going to allow him to ignore it even long enough for him get to his feet. Sam was going to feel this now. The longer he fought against it, the longer he would be useless to Dean.

Letting himself break down did not come naturally to Sam. I mean, he was better at it than Dean, but then, so was everyone else on Earth. He could do it if he needed to. And he really, _really_ needed to. The tears came slowly at first, as Sam let a few sobs escape, until eventually it was coming out of him like a flood. He curled up on the floor in the near-total darkness and cried. Cried as he hadn't since he was eight and he'd first had to spend a night apart from Dean. He let himself be overwhelmed. He let himself have ten minutes of helplessness.

Too quickly, the time was up. None of it was gone, not the fear, not the pain, not the images in his mind, but they were manageable now. He stopped crying and got to his feet without difficulty, ashamed of his weakness. Here he was wasting time while Dean needed him. He could hear his father's voice as clearly as he had when he was eight.

_It's time to be a man. _

----------

Sam waited outside in the Impala (thank God Dean had finally sprung for backup keys) for the monks to arrive. He'd needed to get out of that warehouse, and the car had felt safe. Unconsciously, he had gotten in on the passenger's side. Surrounded by the miscellanea of Dean's life, it was almost like his brother wasn't gone at all.

Some part of him hoped that the demon would still make his attempt. He was pretty sure he wouldn't, but Sam had no other leads. Besides which, the monks might know something useful about how to find the demon—and by extension Dean—before it was too late.

It would have been easy just to wait until the demon came to him. He knew it would happen. He knew the part that he still had to play in the demon's plan. The endgame required both brothers, not just the one. Though San knew that if he waited, it was likely that the demon would not show himself until nothing could be done to stop him.

Sam was unwilling to face what he might have to do if he didn't get to Dean in time.

The first monk arrived at 10:38 and Sam dove under the dashboard to conceal his 6'4" frame. He would wait until they had all arrived to reveal himself. He didn't want to spook them: cults like this generally didn't appreciate observers, and there was no way of telling which of them might have useful information. So he hid and waited, peeking up through the windshield every once in a while to note the arrivals.

At 10:57 he pushed open the car door and sneaked out. He pulled his jacket closed against the cold night air and tried to lighten his footfalls to soften the sound of the gravel crunching under his feet. The warehouse door was already cracked open and he peered through, waiting until the leader took the stage before entering. He felt a twinge of guilt as he realized that he _still_ half-hoped the man's head would soon be rolling on the ground.

Sam eased himself inside and the man on the stage—the only one facing him—instantly noticed. His confused stare was enough to get the whole mass of brown robes to turn around to face Sam. This would usually have caused Sam (or indeed, any person) significant discomfort and fear. But at this moment, it was something very near to inconsequential.

"Who—" The leader started, his drawn and aged face equal parts suspicious and annoyed. Sam didn't even let him finish before launching into the speech he had been preparing in his mind.

"My name is Sam Winchester. I hunt the supernatural. The demon that killed your friend in the museum has taken my brother and is going to try to destroy his soul so that he can possess his body and live eternally here on Earth. If he succeeds, he will use his new freedom to kill you all, one by one, until everyone who touched the relic of St. Ansius is dead." He knew he was breaking the #1 Winchester rule, but at this point, he didn't really care. Dean was missing, and Sam did not have time for clever lies and con games. Besides, it was not as if a cult dedicated to obtaining powers from a magical finger-bone would really think he was crazy.

Sam took a deep breath and summoned up his most lawyerly, persuasive tone. "After that he will be unstoppable. You can only imagine the things I've seen inside his mind, the things he'd do if he had the chance. So you can help me or you can have the blood of thousands of people on your hands."

The audience looked at him in stunned silence. Sam was impressed with himself. He hadn't lost his oratorical touch. The leader looked down at him appraisingly, scratching absently at his short grey beard.

"You…have faced this demon?" The old man asked in a wary voice.

"The pool of unidentified blood they found at the scene of Milo Jacobs' murder was mine. The demon let us live, and healed me, because he enjoyed fighting us. Now he has a different reason to keep us alive." Sam struggled not to let his apprehension show as he laid everything out, just as he struggled to ignore the memories his own words brought to mind.

"Why should we believe you?" Grey-beard asked. Sam looked back up impatiently.

"This afternoon I had a dream in which I saw you die. I saw the demon appear behind you as you began to speak and I saw him cut your head clean off your shoulders with little more than a flick of his wrist. I saw him slaughter you all and the only reason you're alive right now is because when I saw it, the demon did too. Because of my vision, the demon knew we were coming, and presently, my brother and I are more important to him than you are."

Sam took a step forward, looked down at the floor and then back up, his eyes blazing with every ounce of sincerity he could project.

"As for why you should believe me…I have no reason to lie. You don't have the artifact. You can't give me the powers you got from it. And I'm not asking you for money or to go into danger to help me find my brother." Sam ticked each item off on his fingers. "All I'm asking you to do is tell me everything you know about the demon, the relic, and St. Ansius. That's a small price to pay for the only chance you've got to live out this year."

Another step forward and Sam grimaced as he felt a stabbing pain in his belly. His hand dropped to cover the still-sore wound. Around him the monks continued to gawk dumbly.

"Brother Darius, go to him." The leader commanded, hard brown eyes softening at the sight of the young hunter in pain.

A small, balding man of perhaps forty years stood up from his chair and walked over to Sam. Sam eyed him warily, especially as he reached out to grab Sam's shirt. Sam deflected his arm, shooting him a look that said 'what do you think you're doing?' The look he received in return was an unmistakable 'helping you, fool.'

Sam realized in that moment that he would have to trust these monks if he ever wanted them to trust him.

Sam reluctantly dropped his arms to his sides and let the man pull up his shirt, revealing the scarred remnants of the entry and exit wounds of the demon's sword. Brother Darius put one hand on each wound. With some difficulty Sam resisted the urge to withdraw from the feeling of strange hands on his skin. He was deeply discomfited by his public vulnerability.

The monk's hands softly glowed yellow, and Sam could hear the quiet hum of the magic doing its work. Warmth shot through Sam's abdomen and the stiffness and pain began to miraculously subside, though the scars themselves did not heal. Still, he felt stronger, like he was regaining lost blood. It was invigorating, and Sam felt his anxiety melt away, if only for as long as the contact lasted.

After perhaps a minute, Darius withdrew his hands and crumpled to the floor, clearly drained of energy. Before Sam could reach down several of other monks had grabbed up their Brother and were carrying him back to his chair.

"Thank…you." Sam tried hesitantly, not knowing what else to say. He felt good, better than he remembered feeling for quite some time. He looked up at the leader again.

"Now, Sam Winchester, we will tell you what we know." The monk said.

----------

In the darkness Dean was carrying baby Sammy out of the fire. This was the fifth time the scene had replayed in his mind. He knew it wasn't really happening. He knew the demon was making him see it. It was like he was merely observing it, even though he experienced it as vividly as he had when it had originally happened.

"Do you love your brother, Dean Winchester?" The demon asked, tauntingly, from the shadows, his voice mellifluous.

Dean didn't answer. He wasn't going to play this game. He would not be so easily manipulated.

"_DO YOU?_" The voiced boomed inside his mind so loud he felt like his head would explode. Dean cried out in surprise and pain, squirming uselessly against his restraints. He realized now that this must be how the visions felt for Sammy, and that knowledge hurt worse than his head.

"YES!" He yelled quickly. "Of course I love my brother. What the hell does it matter to you?"

"Oh, it matters a great deal." He showed Dean the memory of carrying Sammy from the house again. "Now, do you really love him, or is this merely filial duty? Obedience to you father?"

Challenging Dean's love for Sam was not something Dean took lightly. "I love my brother because he's my brother, you twisted son of a bitch, not because my father told me to."

"Good." The demon seemed convinced. "This will not work if you do not truly love him."

----------

The senior monks sat with him in a circle of folding chairs, having excused their lesser brethren. Mostly the leader spoke, though occasionally one of the others interjected a detail or date. These men knew precious little, Sam quickly realized. Their traditions had not forgotten the demon, but they had certainly underestimated his power. Besides the relic, they knew nothing of his weaknesses. They did not know his planar home, and had no idea how to find him.

Sam did learn that the remains of St. Ansius had disappeared from the catacombs 900 years ago, around the time the original order of Ansius had been killed and their monastery burned. It was presumed that the demon had stolen them first, and come looking for the remaining sliver of the Saint only after. This news was unsurprisingly unhelpful.

Sam was about to give up on them when they began to tell him about Ansius himself. The Saint was a great, godly man, or so they said. He had learned to hate the supernatural early in his life when his parents had been killed by a demon, leaving him alone to care for his sister Imoen. His study of the Bible led him from pauper to priest, in an impressive display of medieval class mobility. He spent his days evangelizing and hunting evil beings, all the while sending back considerable portions of the tithes and donations he received to help his sister live in relative comfort.

That was all before his sister developed her gifts. Ansius had returned home one day to find that Imoen had nightmares in which she saw the future. Suddenly his own sister was a witch, and Ansius had no idea what to do about it. Eventually he realized that he had to do what he had done to all the others: he had to kill her. Sorrowfully, he did.

For so much did St. Ansius love the world and his God that he sacrificed his only sister.

That was when one of the memories the demon had showed him crystallized in Sam's mind. The final piece clicked into place.

----------

"Please Eisen, I swear to you I don't control it!" Imoen cried.

Her voice carried a fear Eisen could hardly stand. He knew that she couldn't control it. He knew that she did not have her powers of her own choice. But he also knew that people like his sister were gateways for the devil to invade this world, that she was a witch whether she wanted to be or not. He advanced on her and she threw herself back away from him, tears streaking down her face as her own brother brandished his sword.

"Do not fight this, sister. It is…hard enough already." The priest managed to choke out. "You know what must be done. And you know that I cannot be deterred."

Eisen moved toward her again, and she turned to flee. He leapt forward and grabbed her shoulder with his left hand. He spun her around and pinned her to the wall as she screamed.

"No, Eisen, I'll stop it! I will! I won't use the powers anymore! Please don't kill me!" She pleaded, her voice breaking with sobs as her brother looked at her sorrowfully. He was almost breaking. It was the closest to tears she'd ever seen Eisen.

"You can't promise me that, Imoen. The powers are not yours to control. God will hold you blameless." He hoped against hope that he was not lying to her. "God will let you into heaven, and you will see our parents. And you will never have to worry about endangering others again."

"No…Eisen please…"

Eisen leaned down and kissed her forehead. Then summoning up all his might he drove his sword right through his sister's heart.

----------

Dean's mind swam up from the vision into consciousness.

"You sick FUCK! You killed your own sister!" Dean yelled into the darkness.

"It had to be done, Dean Winchester, just as this does." Ansius' tone was almost apologetic, like he was trying to justify his actions to himself, and not just to Dean. Or maybe he was trying to justify his actions to the sister he had killed 1300 years ago.

"What are you talking about? What the fuck do you want with me?" Dean was growing more and more terrified, as he realized that Sam was very much like Imoen. Whatever this demon had planned, it likely involved doing very unpleasant things to his little brother.

"What I _want_, Dean Winchester, is to use my powers to destroy all of the evil supernatural things that I couldn't when I was alive. But I am bound by mystic power to this in-between place, and I need a body, your body, to manifest in the material realm for long." The demon was suddenly determined, his voice bordering on cold anger. Dean recognized the tone because he had used it himself when trying to suppress guilt.

"I'll kill you before I let you touch my brother again!" Dean yelled, momentarily unaware of the ridiculousness of his threats from his bound and helpless position. The world brightened a little and Dean saw Ansius' face looking down at him, the demon's regal features absent of emotion, frozen solid. Ansius was holding a small box that Dean recognized as the relic.

"I don't intend to touch your brother, Dean Winchester. I intend for you to." Dean looked on in terror, trying to come to grips with the implications of the demon's words. Ansius unchained the hunter's left hand and with terrible strength forced it into contact with the relic. Dean felt a disgusting warmth wash over him before his vision faded.

End Chapter 5


	6. Of Hunters and Killers

_I claim what's mine and disclaim the rest. If you're reading this you can probably tell the one from the other._

_Sorry about the wait. Chapter 6 gave me no end of trouble._

_Thanks to all of my reviewers. If you sent a signed review, I think you got a reply. If you didn't, it was an omission that I will endeavor to rectify. _

_Ophelia has returned as my beta, and all is right with the universe. You people don't know how good you have it that I'm not posting my first drafts, and that so talented a hand is sculpting, Michelangelo-like, a presentable work from the rough-hewn blocks of text I send her. Ophelia, you rock so hard it is measurable on the Richter scale. _

Chapter 6: Of Hunters and Killers

The boy didn't understand, Ansius realized as he worked his way through Dean's mind. As much as he knew of the evils of the world, he lacked insight about his brother's place in it.

There was an order to the material world. Relativity defined the movements of the stars and galaxies, the orbits of planets and moons. Quantum mechanics governed the interactions of infinitesimal particles. Chemistry explained fire and water and stone and metal and biology explained life itself. The universe and everything in it was measurable in four dimensions; length, depth, width, and time. It was knowable, real, and solid.

A gap existed that separated the material universe of Einstein and Hawking from the other universe, in which resided potentiality in its purest form, the undiluted quanta of existence undefined by natural law.

That gap was the in-between place, from which all demons came and to which all paranormal things were in some way attached. It was an infinite span of various planes of existence. If reality was fluid like water in the beyond, it was frozen like polar ice in the material world. The in-between place was then the ring of broken glaciers and ice-floes that separated the ocean from the pole.

In most places, the curtains that separated the in-between place from materiality were drawn tight and could not be traversed, but there existed weaknesses. Sometimes these weaknesses were tied to a material place, perhaps because of some flaw in the fabric of existence. Sometimes humans themselves imprinted their subconscious fears, hopes, and dreams on the nature of a place or time or thing, weakening reality around those loci.

Some sentient beings were born with a psychic gift to see beyond reality. They did not possess this power, Ansius believed, because they could see through the curtains separating the worlds. Rather, they possessed this power because around them the curtains simply did not exist, or were at least threadbare and thin. They did not merely attract demons and the paranormal: their very presence allowed these unnatural things entrance to the material realm.

Only certain creatures could pierce the veil even where the curtain was weak and frayed. Those that could were almost universally evil, for to exist in the material world required sentient acceptance of that existence. That acceptance did not need to be conscious, and it usually wasn't. In the subconscious, where humans suppressed their evil drives and inner fears, demons found their ingress.

Of all the beings of this halfway world, Ansius knew of only a few who had once been human. As the ineffable potential of his consciousness (his soul) departed the material world for the beyond at his mortal death, it had become trapped in the in-between place. There it had taken new form in his old shape, and he had discovered his powers.

His plane was a bleak eternity of smoldering churches and basalt mountains lit by dying fires that never quite went out. He had spent hundreds of years here, battling armies of his own creation, for simulated killing let him taste simulated revenge. He was warped and twisted into the creature he was now in those early years after his death. Every once in a while he summoned up the strength to burst through a weak spot in the veil and enact his revenge upon the monsters and human psychics living in the material world. He sometimes killed even non-psychic humans for sport on these ethereal jaunts, so much had he learned to crave real violence.

One day he had felt his power ebbing, being drawn away from him somehow. He investigated, and was enraged by what he found. Veneration of his mortal remains had imbued a relic with the ability to transfer small portions of his power into willing human supplicants. It took him quite a long time to gather the strength to jump across to the material world, but when he did, he took no chances. First he recovered all of the rest of his bones, easily found in the catacombs where they had been placed after his absurd beatification, so that no other relic could be made. Then he went after the monks hiding the relic.

The monks divulged nothing, refusing to lead him to the relic, so he killed them all and burned down their monastery. As he did, he reclaimed the power each monk had taken. His failure to obtain the relic had haunted him until the present day, when it had been rediscovered and he had felt his power draining away again. This time, though, the relic was put on display, and he had recovered it easily.

That brought him back to the hunters, who were his way out of an undying existence beyond the veil. Using the relic, he was gaining control of Dean's mind. The boy was resisting, but it would not be long before he gave in. He would be made to understand, Ansius promised himself.

Soon Dean Winchester would recognize that his brother had to die.

----------

Sam didn't tell the monks what he now knew: that the Saint they worshipped was the very demon they feared. Instead he told them all to leave Boston, to flee to their respective homes, so that they would be harder to track if Sam and Dean failed to kill the demon. It was a futile gesture, Sam knew, but there was nothing else to do.

Just like there was nothing else to do right now. Sam absently sharpened a dagger (because, well, Dean wasn't there to do it) as he waited for the inevitable vision that would lead him to his brother. He would not find Ansius until the demon wanted to be found. What's more, Sam knew what he would probably have to do. He tried very hard not to think about it.

----------

Hours passed as the demon explored Dean's mind. Like a tactician, Ansius needed to know the battlefield. This boy would not be easily turned.

He took stock of every memory that might be of use to him, every repressed feeling, every forgotten slight, every bit of ill-intent Dean harbored for his brother. The demon quickly realized that it was not nearly enough. He could not overwhelm Dean's love for Sam with something so simple as anger or hatred. Unlike many demons, it was not in his power to magnify emotions: only to make them felt by tearing down the walls that suppressed them.

Thus, he would have to subvert Dean's emotions. Somehow, he would have to convince Dean that his brother needed to die _for his own sake_. It would be a challenge, but then, it would also fit Ansius' needs far better as well. The greater the similarity between Dean's sin and his own, the easier the boy would be to possess.

First, he would have to make Dean believe that Sam was responsible for their mother's death. This was far easier than it seemed like it would be. Dean had simply refused to think about the possibility, and so had little defense against the release of his own subconscious suspicions. As Ansius had already shut off the boy's rationality, or at least impaired it, when Dean awoke, he would find it hard to come to any other conclusion.

Next, Ansius summoned up every memory Dean had of Sam in pain, physical, psychological, or otherwise. In particular, he wanted Dean to see the pain that Sam's visions and nightmares caused him. He wanted Dean to feel all the guilt that he had neglected to deal with, to acknowledge all the pain he knew his brother was in. Ansius wanted Dean to think that Sam's pain was virtually unbearable; that death would be a release.

Finally, the coup de grace. It was not difficult at all to twist Dean's memory of every guilty look he'd ever seen on Sam's face, every attempt at accepting responsibility for their mother's death, for Jess's, into a coherent picture of a person irredeemably broken but unable to let go. Ansius showed Dean a Sam that wanted to die, but lived only for fear of the effects of his death on his brother. Dean would feel guilty that Sam was alive at all.

Motivation developed and players determined, now it was only a matter of setting. A church, Ansius thought, would be appropriate. There was one in Boston where the veils were particularly weak due to several exorcisms and at least one haunting. In a blink they were there, Ansius standing at the altar over Dean's unconscious body.

Now to summon the brother. Ansius reached out with his mind and found the young psychic alone in his hotel room. It was a simple matter to show him enough to lead him to the church.

All that remained was to wait.

----------

Dean awoke in an oak-walled church with vaulted ceilings and square pillars. He felt surprisingly fresh, despite his recent unconsciousness. He sat up just as a voice called to him from the narthex.

"Dean? Dean are you okay?" Sam's voice was nervous, as though he suspected what was coming. Dean stood to face his brother.

"Yes Sam, I'm okay. But you aren't. And you haven't been for a long time."

End Chapter 6


	7. Crossing the Line

_**Disclaimer:** I disclaim nothing! Except all of the stuff that doesn't belong to me._

_**Warnings:** This chapter contains a significant amount of pretty graphic violence. It is the climax of this story and as such, it includes two big fights, each of which ends in a particularly gut-wrenching way. Most of you probably will have no problem with this, especially if you've read the rest of this story, but if you don't like icky bloody violence, this may not be the chapter (or fic, come to think of it) for you._

_**Thanks: **To every reviewer, and more importantly to the infinitely patient and excellent Ophelia, without whose efforts this story would be far less enjoyable._

_**Note: **You people are getting this chapter a day early because I'm a nice guy (well, not really, but whatever), and that last cliffhanger was pretty brutal. This does mean, however, that you will have to wait about a week for chapter 8. _

Chapter 7: Crossing the Line

Sam had seen this expression directed at him only once before. It had been a shape-shifter, in Dean's form. It had horrified him then in a way that he still could not find the words to express. This was infinitely worse. This was indisputably his brother.

And his brother was about to try to kill him.

"Dean, get a grip man, that thing is controlling you." Sam tried, his voice betraying his rapidly mounting fear as he and Dean circled each other. That was not precisely true. Sam knew more about Ansius than anyone else could hope to. He knew Ansius wasn't directly controlling Dean's actions. He knew that everything Dean was doing was rooted in some part of himself that Ansius had disinhibited. Ansius had removed barriers like morality, rationality, and loyalty. In so doing, he had freed portions of Dean's subconscious and given them control.

As much as this changed him he was still, fundamentally, Dean.

Sam knew better than anyone that selective disinhibition of parts of the subconscious was a powerful means of mind control, and an easy way to induce a violent psychotic break. That did not make this easy. He now understood why Dean refused to talk about what had happened in the Asylum, when their roles had been reversed.

"You've got to die, Sammy. You're not natural." Dean's voice was fatherly, authoritative. "And I know that you didn't mean to kill Mom, and Jess, but they still died because of you."

The words hit Sam like a brass-knuckled fist to the stomach. He tried not to show how much it hurt, but he knew Dean could see it all the same.

"You don't believe that." He whispered, steeling himself against tears.

"How can I _not_?" Dean demanded. "They died the exact same way, above _your bed _and the only thing they had in common was you."

"Stop, Dean. Please." Sam pleaded, choking back a sob. This was an attack against which he had no defense. Sam had never insulated himself from the guilt he felt about his mother and girlfriend. It had been Dean who had protected him from it, convinced him of his own innocence every time he thought to fault himself. So Dean knew better than anyone how to smash that wall down. Cold empiricism: _the only thing they had in common was you_. Sam was the only, or at least, by far the _best_ explanation.

"People with powers like yours don't belong in the world." Dean continued, his voice apologetic. "It's not your fault that you're dangerous, Sammy. You were born that way. And I know it tears you up inside to think of all the pain you've caused—because you're a good person."

The most twisted thing about it was that Dean's voice conveyed love. "I know you want it to stop. I do too. It hurts me to see you in pain. So let's end it. Right here. Right now."

Even now, Dean loved him and wanted what was best for him. It was death. It was death that was best for him. Death that would stop the pain Sam felt and Dean hated to see. It was all so reasonable. So simple. So obvious. Sam's whole body trembled, fighting against the possibility that _this_ Dean was right, and the other was wrong. That by stripping away Dean's excuses, Ansius had left him with the truth.

"Come here, and let me do this quick. I promise you won't feel a thing." Dean reached a tentative hand into the intervening space.

Sam almost took it. It wasn't for his own sake that he didn't. Sam knew what it meant that Ansius was influencing his brother. He knew what Ansius was trying to show him. Trying to get him to do.

And he knew what it would cost Dean if he didn't stop him.

There was a dark pleasure in the hunt. Understanding it required the recognition that the motivation to provide and protect was no more powerful than the motivation to kill for the pleasure of it. Dean felt pleasure in the hunt because it allowed him, through acts of violence against things he associated with the loss of his mother, some measure of revenge.

What kept him human—what kept him humane—was that there was a line he would not cross. Dean could kill a human being he thought dangerous. He hadn't had to yet, but he could. The line wasn't even at innocence; he'd been willing to kill Roy LeGrange before they'd even had all the answers. For Dean, the line was his brother. Dean might sacrifice the world to destroy the thing that killed his mother. He would sacrifice his own life and soul. He would _never_ sacrifice Sam.

For Ansius it had been his sister. He had become a servant of evil the moment he killed her. Now Ansius wanted a mortal body; one that he could easily inhabit so that he could exist perpetually in this world, but he was constrained by mystic law. He was unable to simply possess a mortal being. For Ansius to possess Dean, he needed Dean to cross the very same line that he himself had. He needed Dean to kill Sam.

Sam struggled to get control of himself. It wasn't easy. A large and growing part of him had heard everything that Dean had said, and believed it all. That didn't change Sam's love for his brother though, and Sam would not allow his death to facilitate the invasion of Dean's body by an undying monster.

He had to survive this, if only to save his brother's soul.

Fear, guilt and regret were not helpful. He was going to have to fight his brother, and he was going to have to win. Luckily, the Winchesters were well-practiced at converting unresolved pain into anger, and anger was quite helpful indeed.

Sam leveled his grey-green eyes at Dean.

"I'm not going to let you kill me." Sam growled.

"I understand. You're afraid. You need help." Dean cooed, as if speaking to a four-year old. "I'll help you Sammy."

"God I'm going to enjoy kicking your ass." Sam said under his breath, bringing his hands up.

----------

Neither man was armed. Sam had a dagger tucked in his belt, and a backup strapped to his right calf, but he wasn't about to use either on his brother. Dean looked drained from his captivity, while Sam was fully recovered from his injuries. He was fresher, and he was fighting for his life. That didn't mean Sam was confident. He'd never been in a knock-down, drag-out 'two-men enter one-man leaves' type fight with Dean. He'd always suspected Dean had held back when sparring. Held back even when they fought for real, over the things brothers fight about. Even then, Dean had usually kicked his ass. Still, he'd been younger then, and the smaller of the two. Now he had the size advantage.

Dean threw the first punch and Sam deflected it with his left arm, countering with a body-punch that Dean didn't bother to block. A feint and a kick to the shin sent pain shooting up Sam's leg. He grimaced and stumbled, but stayed standing, throwing an elbow at Dean's jaw.

Dean dodged left, using the opening to hit Sam with a left/right combo in the stomach, eliciting a gasp from Sam as some of the air was pushed out of his lungs. Sam backed out so he could take a breath. Dean ducked in to prevent it, throwing a thunderous right followed by a powerful front kick. The punch missed and the kick's force was blunted by Sam's backward momentum. Still, it sent him reeling back into the wooden wall. He braced himself and got back into fighting position.

This was not good.

He looked up at Dean, whose expression still read like a man sorrowfully being forced to put down the family dog.

"The sooner you accept this, the less I'll have to hurt you Sammy."

"It's Sam, asshole." He leapt forward, throwing a right heel kick that narrowly missed Dean's head. Dean dodged back and Sam had the initiative. Focusing his rage, Sam flew into a frenzy. He threw punch after angry punch, kick after furious kick. Dean was pushed back under the pressure of his brother's advance.

Sam tried to keep his brother on the defensive, but it was exhausting. Dean seemed almost _too_ prescient; he artfully avoided the worst of the blows, getting in a few hits of his own while easily avoiding significant injury.

Sam threw a spinning back kick and Dean grabbed his leg. He shoved Sam backwards. Sam barely managed to stay on his feet and quickly wished he hadn't made the effort as Dean connected with a right turning kick to his left cheekbone. Dean advanced slowly and surely, anticipating Sam's every step and making headway with brutal counterattacks.

Sam could feel himself losing the fight. It terrified him. Every move was turned against him. Every hit he registered cost him several in return. He was battered and bruised and seeing stars. He must have taken dozens of vicious hits to the face and body before he found his back against the wall again.

He threw his last meaningful punch with his right. Dean caught it and twisted, eliciting a yelp from Sam as he was shoved sidelong into the hardwood wall. Maintaining his hold on Sam's arm, Dean used the opening to deliver three devastating side kicks to Sam's torso. Trapped between Dean's foot and the heavy oak, the only place the force could go was into compressing Sam's ribcage. Both of them felt and heard the cracks as several of Sam's ribs broke under the pressure. Sam cried out in pain, and only cried louder as Dean continued to twist his arm, forcing the shoulder out of its socket and inducing a spiral fracture just below the elbow.

Then Dean finally let Sam fall.

Sam tried to get up by bracing against the wall, but could not overcome the pain. He whimpered as he fell again. He found he was having trouble breathing. That probably meant a punctured lung. He could taste blood in the back of his mouth, which meant internal bleeding.

He was dying, and Dean wasn't going to save him.

Dean crouched down next to him and Sam tried to back away, but a hand on his injured shoulder forced his compliance. Sam tried to keep from crying.

"Sammy, you're only hurting yourself." He moved around to Sam's front, and kneeled, straddling Sam's legs. Sam's back was against the wall and his right arm hung uselessly at his side. Sam reached over with his left to grab the dagger in his belt, hoping he could at least hold Dean off until he came to his senses. Dean was far too quick, catching his hand and pinning it to the wall above his head. "It's over."

Ansius walked out of the shadows behind Dean. His face was grimly satisfied.

"Well done, human." He commended. "Now take his dagger and finish him. Stab him through the very wound I gave him." Dean took the dagger off of Sam's belt with his left hand, as Sam tried pathetically to resist.

Dean looked into Sam's eyes with deadly earnestness.

"Dean, you've got to fight this. He wants your body. He's twisting your mind." Sam babbled as fear threatened to overwhelm him. "Please…" He said, beginning to cry. He very nearly started begging for his life. Dean leaned down and kissed his forehead.

Dean plunged the dagger into Sam through the scar Ansius had made, all the way through his body and an inch or so into the wooden wall behind.

Sam's eyes widened at the pain, surprised even now that it was his brother doing this. That was it. There was nothing more he could do to save Dean. He had been too weak. Sam looked up at his brother through dimming eyes and whispered.

"I'm sorry."

----------

As Ansius released his psychic hold, Dean looked down at his brother, and nearly screamed as realization gripped him. He fought with every part of himself to retain control as his greatest nightmare played out before him. Ignoring Ansius completely he stripped off his over-shirt, and, ripping it in half, made two bandages. He left the dagger in Sam's body, knowing that it might be all that was preventing his brother from bleeding out, and staunched the entry and exit wounds as best he could with a bandage each. He fastened them there with his belt.

He snaked his left hand up Sam's right calf to find the backup dagger he knew Sam was carrying. With the weapon in hand he rose to face the demon.

"He's still dying." Ansius knifed, his eyes betraying sadistic glee. "And when he does, your body will be mine."

Dean stared at the demon coldly. Even having touched the relic, he was no match for this creature with only a dagger in his hand. He subtly surveyed the room for another weapon.

"I suppose you're wondering why I released you at all." The demon continued, arrogantly turning his back on Dean as he needlessly exposited. "I wanted to fight you one more time before I destroyed your soul and took your shell as my own. The wound your brother is bleeding from will give us a few minutes' time."

Ansius turned back around, a gleaming cross-hilted longsword in his left hand. "I believe this is your weapon of choice?" He laid it on the floor and pushed it over. Dean stopped it with his boot, reached down, and picked it up.

This thing was going to regret giving him a weapon.

----------

Dean deflected a thrust and made the demon pay for it with a push kick to the midsection. Ansius fell back several steps and brought his sword up. Dean took a step in and Ansius backed away, maintaining the distance between them, the demon's expression one of genuine surprise. It was as if he had been a demon for so long he didn't remember pain. Dean would enjoy instructing him on the subject.

Ansius' face changed rapidly from surprise to excitement. He was going to get the challenge he had desired for centuries. After that, he would have a new mortal body with which to rid the world of every unnatural thing. He unhooked his regal purple cloak and let it billow to the ground. He abandoned his aristocratic posture, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet and dropping into an athletic stance that mirrored Dean's.

Dean glared back at him, his green eyes betraying raw, honest hatred. Dean brought his weapons around and up, stretching his arms through the full range of motion. He straightened his right arm, pointing the sword blade directly at Ansius before bringing it down into fighting position.

This was about to end.

They stared at each other across the space. Dean knew that time was limited. That Sam was slipping away. Ansius was going to make him move first. So he did.

Dean leapt forward, thrusting with his longsword in what seemed to be anything but a feint. Ansius was not fooled, sidestepping easily and bringing his sword out in a short arc to deflect the real attack, an upward thrust with the dagger. The demon recovered initiative faster, almost too fast, and Dean fell back with a cut on his chest, his dodge just fast enough to avoid more grievous injury.

"Come now. You can't have thought that would work."

"Get 'em in while you can. You won't be talkin' for much longer." Dean growled, rage boiling over into his voice. He did not doubt himself. This latest injury was just another affront to be rectified, another crime for which Ansius would have to pay.

This time Ansius moved first, bringing his sword around in a long arc that stopped before it reached Dean's sword. He dodged in and under, bringing his sword up and barely missing Dean's throat. A punch to Dean's abdomen sent him reeling before he could connect with his counterstroke. Dean recovered quickly and looked to Ansius.

"Your brother is running out of time." The demon mocked in a worried voice. "Dying from wounds you inflicted."

"You shut your FUCKING mouth!" Dean shouted, charging at Ansius, sword and dagger swinging wildly. Ansius moved in and out, exploiting every hole, every vulnerability, even as Dean pushed him back with a flurry of spiteful blows. Dean kept the pressure on, ignoring the hits, ignoring the pain. Each strike came closer to landing, drove Ansius further back until at last Dean saw his opening and struck with all his might.

But the demon was gone.

Dean took a breath and felt the pain of five newly opened cuts. Even now he could not think of losing. Sam was counting on him. He would not fail his brother again.

"Show yourself you fucking COWARD!" He yelled at the rows of pews.

Pain shot through him as he felt Ansius' sword pierce his right shoulder. He dropped his longsword and it clattered loudly against the granite floor. Behind him, Ansius laughed arrogantly.

"You had a chance, Dean Winchester. If you were stronger you might have stopped me." The demon leaned in close to whisper to him. "My power to heal is in my blood. If you had only defeated me, had only loved your brother a little more, you might have saved his life."

The words were like salt poured into Dean's bleeding wounds. That was what the demon intended. This was about inflicting as much pain as possible. From where Dean stood, he could see his brother slumped against the far wall, impaled by a dagger he himself had driven into him. Despite the distance he could almost hear Sam's labored breathing, almost feel his heart slowing. Dean almost collapsed under the weight of his own desperation.

From somewhere within him, deep and primal and near forgotten, from somewhere beyond good and evil, beyond the reach of even the mightiest demon, came a memory of his own words. A promise he'd made to his brother.

_As long as I'm around, nothing bad is going to happen to you._

Dean couldn't give up on Sam. It wasn't in his nature. His despair turned to rage and determination as he realized that he could still save his brother. If he had no strength left in him then he would have to conjure it from nothing. He would not just allow this to happen.

Ansius left his sword in Dean's shoulder just a moment too long. It was the demon's last mistake.

With a defiant bellow, Dean threw himself backward against one of the square pillars with all his might, pinning Ansius behind him, forcing the demon's sword further into his shoulder. He grunted in pain as he re-gripped his dagger and buried it in Ansius' side, eliciting a howl of pain from his opponent. He pulled it out and drove it in again, and again, and again, through flesh and bone with horrible force, reveling in the demon's cries.

Slowly, Ansius' struggles ceased. That was it. Dean had won.

He forced himself forward and away, trying hard to ignore the nausea-inducing sound of the demon's sword sliding out of his shoulder. Ansius slumped to the floor behind him, sword still gleaming in hand, miraculously bloodless in the warm light of the stained windows. Dean looked across the room at Sam.

The image of his horrifically beaten brother pinned against the wall, dagger through his torso, bandages soaked in blood, was one Dean knew he would never forget, but could not now consider. The demon's blood was Sam's only hope, and he had to drench him in it _fast_. He grabbed the demon's body by the legs and began to drag it over to his brother.

End Chapter 7


	8. Pain Management

_I disclaim stuff._

_Thanks to all of my reviewers. I didn't have a chance to respond to most of you. This is not because I don't love you.  
_

_A very special thanks goes to Ophelia. Except for a couple of chapters in the middle, Ophelia has betad this whole story. She has improved both the quality of the story itself and my own understanding of the art of creative writing immeasurably. But this time, she did much more for me than that._

_I got stuck on this chapter, people. There was a gaping plot hole I didn't know what to do with. Desperate, I sent my draft to Ophelia and asked her what the heck I should do. So in addition to correcting my errors and pointing out clumsy phrases, she also made a couple of simple plot suggestions which effortlessly and elegantly fixed the problem. _

_I know it's important to give credit and thanks where due. At least in this chapter, Ophelia was more than a beta. For this chapter, she deserves co-author credit. Even if only a few of the words are hers, this chapter would not be nearly completed without her help. So when you review this chapter, which I hope you will, include your thanks to Ophelia. That way, when she reads the reviews, she can know that more than one person appreciates her efforts._

_Sappy stuff out of the way, here is _Hunter/Killer _Chapter 8, a couple of days early._

Chapter 8: Pain Management

Dean stumbled into the emergency room, Sam cradled in his exhausted arms. His brother was heavier than he was, and Dean couldn't even _feel_ his right shoulder anymore, but adrenaline allowed people to accomplish impressive things. The lobby was crowded, noisy, the fluorescent lights unnecessarily bright. Dean dared not shut his eyes. He turned around, looking for someone, anyone, to take care of his brother.

"Someone help me," he said barely above a whisper, his voice as weak as his body. "My brother, he's hurt."

The din around him quieted, waiting-room conversations dying at the sight of the unfolding tragedy.

"Somebody HELP HIM!" Dean yelled, surprised at the sound of his own voice in the fresh silence. A moment passed and Dean wavered, barely catching himself. "I'm getting dizzy and I don't know how much longer I can…"

He blacked out for a moment. Someone caught him as he tumbled forward, and he felt Sam being pulled out of his arms. For a moment he fought it, his clouded mind unsure about giving his brother up. It took considerable effort to overwhelm his instincts and let Sam go.

"We'll take him sir, are you hurt?" The voice was calm but forceful.

Dean blinked and looked around him. Two blue-scrubbed men were wheeling Sam away on a gurney, while another stood before him now. The short young man looked no older than Dean.

"No, 'm fine," Dean slurred unconvincingly. "But my brother, he's in really bad shape. I think he lost a lot of blood…"

"The other doctors will take care of him now, sir. Don't worry about that. Can you tell me your name?" The doctor's gentle brown eyes were looking up into Dean's, evaluating him.

"Dean. My brother's name is Sam." Dean's head was swimming. He felt weak. He didn't feel like talking to this guy. He needed to go after Sam.

He took a step and collapsed, unconscious before he hit the floor.

----------

At some point his unconsciousness had turned to sleep, and with that sleep came cruel dreams.

He saw the fight over and over again, from start to finish. He recalled every awful word he'd said. _You're not natural. They still died because of you. The only thing they had in common was you._ He felt every brutal blow he'd struck. Sam's ribs crunching beneath his boot. The pop of Sam's shoulder being forced out of its socket. The snap of his arm breaking as Dean twisted. The nauseating feeling of his dagger sliding through Sam's flesh.

Worse than all of that, he saw Sam's reactions. Dean remembered Sam's vulnerable anguish at his accusations. The pain in his eyes as he seemed to believe what Dean was saying. The anger he showed as he brought his fists up to do battle. Dean remembered with perfect clarity every painful whimper, yelp, and cry he'd elicited from the boy he'd spent his life protecting. Sam's gasp when Dean punched his solar plexus. His grunt when Dean elbowed him across the jaw. That final, drawn-out scream as Dean broke his body against the wall and tore his arm to pieces.

Sam's terrified eyes—terrified of _him_—as Dean drove the dagger through his brother's body, and the heartbreaking apology his little brother whispered before he slipped into unconsciousness.

And then, like a disgusting joke… _As long as I'm around, nothing bad is going to happen to you._

Dean awoke with a few tears running down his cheeks, mercifully alone, laying in a hospital bed. He took a deep breath and his chest heaved; he was barely able to keep in the sob. He wasn't sure why he still felt like he had to. No one was relying on him now. Probably no one ever would again. He could afford to be weak.

Now if only he knew _how_.

He immediately stopped crying through force of will. It was bad enough to cry while dreaming, when he had no control: he certainly wouldn't allow it while he was awake. He would deal with this later, he promised himself, when Sammy was safe and healthy again.

He hoped his brother would let him be there for him, but he didn't expect miracles. Sam probably wouldn't want to see him. That was okay. He could play Sam's shadow. He'd done it before. Whether he realized it or not Sam had never been alone, and so long as Dean was alive he never would be.

But Sam could be dead.

The thought threatened to overwhelm the hasty emotional barriers Dean had erected, like a rising tide against sandbags. Tears welled in the corners of Dean's eyes. Sure, the demon's blood had healed Sam's external wounds. It even mended his arm and his ribs, though probably not completely. But the worst of it, and what the demon's blood would ironically do nothing for, was the blood loss. Sam's brain might have gone without enough blood for too long. He could be brain damaged.

Sam could be dead.

It hit him again, harder the second time. This time it was a tsunami against the sandbags and a stifled sob escaped. It was only when he heard a knock at the door (the cursory knock of a doctor, which never waited for a reply) that he found the strength, through shame, to force the feelings back down inside of him. Back where they belonged.

The same small, gentle-eyed guy he'd seen before shuffled in, looking down at his charts and not at Dean, who was hastily wiping away any evidence of his lapse.

"Ah, Mr. Harris. You're awake." The doctor said in the strong, friendly way they must teach in medical school. "How are you feeling?"

That was an interesting question, and not one Dean would have thought of on his own. He was feeling okay. The cuts on his chest and back stung, and his shoulder was back to feeling like it was being torn off, but he'd had and ignored much worse.

"Fine. How's my brother?"

"I don't know. I'm not his doctor, and I didn't expect you to be awake this soon, so I haven't gone to see him." The doctor looked into Dean's impatient eyes. "But we still have some things we should talk about. You weren't exactly in great shape yourself when you came in."

Dean let his head fall back down onto his pillow. He didn't really care about this conversation, but it was probably going to have to happen. The doctor noticed his disinterest and adjusted his strategy.

"How about I go check on your brother, come back with an update, and then you can tell me what happened?" He offered. Dean looked at him with a hint of gratitude.

"That'd be great, thanks."

----------

"How bad?" Dean asked as soon as his doctor—Dr. Blake, according to his badge—returned.

"Your brother's going to be fine. He's unconscious at the moment. He lost a lot of blood, although we're not sure from where—there weren't any open cuts, just a lot of old scars. We assume it was internal bleeding from the injuries to his ribs. Do you recall if he was coughing up blood? Because we didn't find much in his abdominal cavity during laparoscopy."

"Yeah. A lot," Dean lied.

"Well, that explains that then," Blake mused. "As I said, there was some serious bruising to his ribs, and some minor fractures. We set his right shoulder and splinted his forearm, which suffered a tiny fracture from twisting. All of that, plus the bruises and abrasions we found means somebody assaulted him."

That stung. Dean let a moment pass.

"So now you want to know what happened, right?" Dean asked, not noticing that the doctor had already turned to leave.

"No, that's alright Mr. Harris. It's all been explained. Your injuries have all been cleaned and bandaged, so you're free to go. Your brother is in room 329 if you want to go see him."

Blake was out the door before Dean could say another word. Dean sat there for a moment, not a little confused, before sliding off the bed with a grimace, picking up his belongings, and heading out the door to see his brother.

----------

Dean gently nudged open the door to Sam's hospital room and peered in. His brother was on his back, peacefully unconscious in his bed. A tall, grey-bearded man stood over him. He wasn't wearing scrubs, and he didn't appear to be making any kind of medical evaluation.

"Who the hell are you?" Dean asked menacingly as he came into the room and closed the door behind him. The man turned to face him and Dean saw that he was immaculately dressed in a charcoal-pinstriped suit and white shirt. His tie was a rich and elegant red weave that looked expensive.

"My name is Aram Jonas, and I'm a professor of archaeology at Harvard," the man said, expression fearless and confident as he extended his hand. Dean didn't take it, maintaining his threatening posture. "Until recently, I was also Brother Elam, master of the Order of St. Ansius."

Dean took a moment to process this. This guy was one of the people the demon had been after. One of the people they'd saved. "Why are you here?"

"My Brothers and I felt the demon die, through our mystical connection to St. Ansius. As a result, we learned that the Saint we had worshipped for so long was, in fact, the demon that had been hunting us." Jonas paused and sighed. "It is a hard thing to learn that you have spent so much time and effort venerating evil."

Dean looked at him impatiently.

"You and your brother saved my life, and the lives of all the other members of our former order. We felt it was our responsibility to try, in some small way, to repay that debt."

Something clicked in Dean's mind. "You're the reason no one is asking any questions."

"Yes. The power the relic bestowed on me was the ability to sense and influence the minds of others. I used that power to find you, and to satisfy the curiosities of the hospital staff. Our powers are fading now that the demon is dead, but I was still strong enough to do you this simple favor. Unfortunately, the powers of our healer were the first to disappear, so we couldn't help you or your brother with your wounds."

"We'll be fine."

"I'm sure you will." The man looked away thoughtfully as Dean's stance softened. "You'll also find that your bills have been paid in full. And as a personal reward for your service, I'd like you to have this."

Jonas withdrew a stack of clean, freshly-pressed hundred dollar bills. They strained against the silver money clip containing them. He handed it to Dean, who looked as if he were about to refuse when the man cut him off. "Your profession cannot pay well, Mr. Winchester, and it ought to. You owe me nothing; if anything, this is but a tiny part of my debt to you. My business card is clipped to the money. If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to call."

"Okay." Dean was shocked, as his eyes indicated. There was easily $5,000 here. He quickly shoved it in his pocket as the man opened the door to leave. He stopped.

"And Mr. Winchester, your fears are groundless," the old man said knowingly. "Even with what little sensitivity remains, I couldn't help but hear your thoughts. Your brother loves you. He won't blame you. And even if he did, there is nothing you could do that he would not forgive."

Jonas closed the door behind him, leaving Dean alone with his brother.

----------

"Sammy, you're only hurting yourself," Dean said softly as he stopped Sam's attempt to reach his dagger, pinning his little brother's unbroken arm to the wall above his head. Sam struggled, as hard as he could, but Dean was much too strong. Terribly strong. "It's over."

Mary walked out of the shadows behind Dean, white nightgown soaked in blood from the wound that killed her. She came up beside Dean, her once-kind face contorted by pain and anger, and she looked down at her youngest son with scorn.

"Well done, Dean," she commended as she laid a gentle hand on her eldest's shoulder. Sam broke down crying the moment he met her eyes, the depth of her hatred shattering him completely. He only cried harder as Jess appeared next to her, her death-wound just as evident, her expression just as spiteful.

"Now take his dagger and finish him," Jess commanded. Dean took the dagger off Sam's belt with ease, his brother's ineffectual resistance not even slowing him.

"Cut him like the demon cut us," Mary demanded. Dean looked into Sam's eyes with deadly earnestness. Sam looked back up at Dean, the only sympathetic face among the three, the only one who might be reasoned with.

"Dean, please…I didn't mean to hurt them. It's not my fault," Sam babbled pitifully through shuddering breaths, overwhelmed by fear.

"Please…I don't want to die," Sam begged, ashamed of his words, his weakness, his unwillingness to accept the punishment he knew he deserved.

Dean leaned down and kissed his forehead. Then his brother plunged the dagger into him, all the way through his body, a _thunk_ announcing its entry into the wooden wall behind.

----------

Sam let out a desperate cry as his eyes shot open and he saw Dean standing over him. Pain exploded from virtually every part of his body as he struggled to move, fighting against the sheets covering him. Dean tried to hold on to him, but Sam flung himself off the high hospital bed, landing roughly on the floor on top of his splinted arm. He yelped in pain.

"Sammy? Sammy!" Dean yelled. Sam barely recognized the fear-stricken voice as his brother's. In a moment Dean was over him again, his hands on Sam, restraining him. Sam resisted as best he could, panicked tears running down his cheeks. "Sammy, stop it! You're hurting yourself."

_Sammy, you're only hurting yourself_.

Unthinking, Sam struck out with his left fist, despite the pain it caused his injured ribs, and made solid contact with Dean's jaw. Dean grunted and fell back onto his bottom. Sam kept trying to stand up, to move, to get away, unsure of where he was or what was going on.

Dean sat there helplessly. He couldn't help his brother if his brother was terrified of him, but he couldn't leave him on the floor, writhing in pain. Dean knew he should do something, but he couldn't think, and couldn't find the strength to move.

Seconds passed like minutes as Sam's thrashing slowed, then stopped. Dean could almost see his mind clearing, comprehension dawning.

"Dean?" Sam asked weakly, uncertain.

"Yeah Sam. It's me," Dean said quietly, as reassuringly as he was able, as he slowly stood up. He made no move towards Sam, in fact, he turned to leave. "I should go get you some help."

"No. Please don't leave," Sam warbled painfully. "I'm okay now. It was a nightmare."

"Do you…" Dean cleared his throat loudly to cover his breaking voice. "Do you want me to help you back up onto the bed?"

Sam nodded as a few more tears escaped.

End Chapter 8


	9. Strength and Weakness

_Author's Notes: _

_Penultimate chapter, ladies and gents. Sorry about the wait. The semester is wrapping up and I'm completely swamped. _

_Thanks to Ophelia, who patiently sat through the many drafts I sent her of this chapter, none of which bore much resemblance to each other. She wisely waited until I sent her one I admitted I was pleased with before making any comments, and while she didn't make many, I think this chapter turned out better for them._

_Thanks to my readers. You guys rock for waiting this long. _

_With that, Chapter 9._

Chapter 9: Strength and Weakness

It had been about fifteen minutes, and the first words out of Sam's mouth were an apology.

"I'm sorry, Dean."

Dean had been sitting there, in the silence, waiting for Sam to say something to start the process. Waiting for what seemed like an eternity. For blame. For tears. For _anything_. This was what Sam came up with? Dean had to fight—_hard—_not to laugh. He looked up at the wall in front of him with a thin, exasperated smile.

"For what?"

"For freaking out. You shouldn't have had to see that."

Dean could hear the shame in his brother's voice. He'd seen Sam at a weak moment, a moment no one was supposed to see. Between the nightmares and the visions, Dean had seen a lot of his brother's weak moments, though none were as bad as this. Sam was never that out of control, never that far from reality.

Or had he been far from reality? Wasn't waking up afraid of Dean perfectly rational?

"I'm okay," Dean muttered.

"C'mon man, I saw your face."

Oh, so this wasn't just the embarrassment. This was guilt too. Sam felt bad that Dean had to see the consequences of...Dean's failure to protect him. Again Dean stifled inappropriate laughter.

"Don't worry about it."

"It's just—that's not how I feel, Dean. I'm not afraid of you."

The statement was so ludicrous that Dean nearly came unglued. Yeah, Sam had seen his face. He'd seen Sam's too. Even if it was only the aftermath of a nightmare, that still meant that somewhere, deep down inside, Sam was afraid of Dean. He'd _fucking seen it_. Did Sam think he was blind?

"Right. You punched me out of brotherly affection."

"I'm sorr…"

"Would you _stop_ with that, Sammy?" Dean sighed deeply, a little surprised at the volume and insistence in his own voice. "I get it. You don't want me to feel bad. But, dude, youapologizing isn't helping."

Dean's heart almost broke as he heard his brother swallow what he could only assume was another apology.

----------

Another few minutes passed.

"I had a nightmare Dean. Which, you know, isn't exactly weird for me." Sam found it difficult to get the words out. He knew this was hard on his brother, but dammit, it was hard on him too. Couldn't Dean give him a fucking inch? Let him say what he needed to say? He forced calm into his voice. "But now that I'm awake, I'm not scared."

"Dude. Leave it alone. God!" Dean fairly shouted. "It isn't my issues we should be talking about."

Sam fought back the wave of frustration, focusing on what he knew about the shape Dean was in. Dean wasn't making eye contact. He wasn't even looking at Sam, or in his general direction. He was sitting in his chair on the left side of Sam's bed looking at the wall in front of him. Even when Dean was repressing, he'd never needed to avoid eye contact.

He had this stone-faced expression he could use, so he could look you right in the eye and convince you he was fine even when he wasn't. It worked one everyone. Even Sam. But for some reason he couldn't manage it now. And that, more than anything, scared the shit out of Sam.

"We're not talking about your issues. We're talking about mine. And I'm telling you they're not as bad as you think."

"So I should feel better now?"

Sam didn't know what to say to that. He hadn't thought that far ahead apparently. Comforting his brother was something he didn't really have much experience with.

"Yeah," Sam mumbled weakly.

"Okay then, are we done? Can we be done with 'make Dean feel better time?'"

Sam flinched at the contempt. He still didn't have an answer, though, and Dean was closing himself off. Before Sam could think of anything, Dean spoke again.

"Sam, we're going to have to talk about this eventually."

An incredulous look blossomed across Sam's face and he practically erupted in frustration.

"Dean, I've been trying to talk to you this whole time!"

"No, Sam. You've been trying to make me feel better, not deal with your shit."

As the words hit him, Sam balled his fists against the anger boiling up inside him. He took a deep, calming breath before speaking.

"Is that what you've been waiting for? For me to open up and admit I'm not okay?" It was hard, he found, to keep this under control, to not explode at his brother. He took another breath. "Why would I do that when you won't?"

"'Cause we're not the same person, Sam." Dean's voice was paternal, and whether it was there or not, Sam couldn't help but hear condescension.

Sam winced at how much that hurt. How young and weak and small it made him feel. He couldn't contain the anger this time.

"So sensitive little Sammy needs to cry on his brother's shoulder, but big tough Dean just suffers alone? Are you my brother or a cliché from a bad cowboy movie?" Sam yelled. Dean still refused to look at him, but Sam could see the anger building in his eyes. Which, in turn, only made Sam angrier. "I'm not twelve anymore Dean as you might have noticed from the fact that I'm bigger than you…"

"Yeah, well, I'm still _stronger_!"

The shout sucked the air out of the room, and for the first time since he'd lifted Sam back onto the bed, Dean was looking at his brother. It was only for a moment, but Sam saw the progression clearly—anger, followed by stunned realization, then regret. Dean turned wordlessly back to the wall.

Sam felt like he'd been kicked. It was degrading, emasculating, at least in part because Sam knew it was true. In every way that mattered, Dean _was_ stronger than him. But that didn't mean he never needed help, and his outburst was evidence of that need. Never in a million years would Dean have said something like that, something that awful, something that hurtful, unless he was flying apart at the seams. Sam shook away the tears—he wouldn't let them unman him too—and summoned what little determination he had.

"I know, Dean," Sam said, just above a whisper. "Believe me I know that."

"Sam, I didn't mean…"

Dean's voice quavered, and in that moment Sam's anger melted away.

"There are only two ways for me to take that, Dean. Either you're saying that you can beat me up, or you're saying you don't break as easy. And I'm pretty sure you didn't mean the first one."

"That's not…" Dean began. Sam cut him off.

"Yeah, it is. And however you meant it, you're right. Both of those things are true." It wasn't an easy admission. They were men—worse, they were brothers and they were competitive by nature. They measured themselves against each other. Admitting weakness, admitting Dean was stronger than him, was humiliating. So what was this strength he found in it? What was this new clarity? "But God, Dean, do you honestly think that you'll always be the one who's coping better? In every situation? All the time? How weak do you think I am?"

"Sam, I don't think you're weak." Dean started, faltering a little. "What I said before was stupid. But I didn't know what else to say. You're not okay, Sam, and I'm not dumb enough to believe you when you say you are."

"You're not okay either, Dean." The calmness in his voice surprised even him.

"Yeah, well, you're worse off than me. And not because you're weaker. You're worse off because what happened to you was worse."

Sam turned to look at his brother, who was still staring away from him, into the wall. Certainty welled inside of him, and he realized he could do this. He could be strong for Dean. He shook his head, hoping Dean could see it out of the corner of his eye.

"No it wasn't, Dean."

Dean seemed unsettled by his brother's serenity. He was breaking down, bit by bit, and was becoming agitated.

"Yes it _fucking _was!" Dean's voice betrayed the fear his anger couldn't conceal as he came to his feet and leaned forward, pressing his palms onto the wall.

"No it _fucking wasn't_," Sam replied coolly.

Dean looked caught, confused. His hands balled into fists.

"I'm not the one the demon was screwing with from the start."

"Yeah, 'cause he didn't do anything to _your_ mind."

"I'm not the one who saw and felt everything that fucker did."

"Yeah, but now that he's dead I don't remember much of it."

"I'm not the one who got blamed for the deaths of his mother and girlfriend, got beaten, got his arm broken, ribs crushed, and stabbed by his OWN GODDAMN BROTHER." Dean spun to Sam, eyes burning with fury, with pain, with guilt. And if Sam hadn't also seen fear, it might have been intimidating.

Sam looked back up at him with sad, sympathetic eyes.

"No. That was me. But I'm not the one who's blaming him."

----------

Dean couldn't tolerate another second, and he tore his gaze away from Sam's gentle, compassionate eyes. It was confusing, this pain growing in his chest, this hunger to let his brother help him. To let himself be weak. Terrifying, even, because it went against everything that he was. Everything he'd ever been taught to be. He had to get out of there.

"I, uh. I need to get some air," he managed as he tried to make his way around the bed to the door.

He was shocked as Sam heaved himself over on the bed and grabbed Dean's right arm with his left hand. Dean instinctively pulled away but Sam held on, yelping in pain as his arm was extended, his ribs protesting the movement. Dean's eyes shot to his brother, guilty, terrified. Sam looked back up with pained determination.

"You're not going anywhere, Dean. Not unless you want to hurt me even more."

The tears were there, Dean could feel them building inside of him as he looked down at his brother, building even as looked away, as he tried to fight them. He was coming apart and he didn't want Sam to see it. He _needed to leave_.

"Please, Sammy, let me go," he whimpered, embarrassed to beg, unable to look his brother in the eye.

"No."

They stood there, for a moment, at an impasse, until Dean knew Sam wouldn't relent. He couldn't stand to hurt his brother. Not now. Not even a little. So he gave up. He reached out with his unrestrained hand and pulled his chair over next to the bed. Only after he sat down did Sam release him.

"It _was_ my fault, Sam," Dean said resignedly.

"No, it wasn't. You're not a superhero, Dean. You may be stronger than me, but you're not so strong that you can stop something like that. All this time, did you think Ellicott only got to me because I was weaker than you?"

"No. But it had to be my fault. It's worse if it wasn't."

"Why?"

"Because if it wasn't my fault…" Dean swallowed heavily and looked down at the floor self-consciously. "If there was nothing I could do…Then that means that I can't protect you. From me."

There it was. It was a revelation for Dean. He looked up at Sam with a broken half-smirk, almost pleased that he understood himself a little better. Sam didn't look surprised, just empathetic. He put his hand on Dean's shoulder.

"You can't, Dean."

Dean's eyes widened in surprise.

"Thanks, that's comforting, Sam," Dean snarked. Sam laughed and Dean smiled a little. For a moment they just let themselves breathe.

Then Sam turned and looked right into his eyes, open and vulnerable, and Dean saw him. Really saw him. He saw Sam's pain, his fear, his guilt. He saw how hard this was for him, how much it cost. He saw the love, unashamed and deep. And for the first time, Dean saw just how strong his little brother was.

"Dean, if you hadn't come and gotten me at college, I would be dead. I would still have had the visions, and I wouldn't have known what to do, and some evil thing would have come and killed me. Every day I live and breathe I owe to you." Sam was on the verge of tears, but so was Dean. Dean could see him will the last words out: "Even if you can't protect me from yourself, you can, and _do_, protect me from everything else."

That was it. That was enough.

"God, Sammy I'm so sorry," Dean whispered desperately as he looked down and cried.

----------

Sam reached over and grabbed his brother's head, pulling them together, and was amazed that it didn't feel weird, didn't feel awkward, even as his older brother trembled against him. He cried too, but his were tears of relief and pride. Relief that he had been able to give his brother what he needed. Pride that Dean, the strongest man he knew, had found the strength to let himself, just this once, be weak.


	10. Going Forward

_Author's Notes:_

_Last chapter, people! Who's excited? I'm excited. _

_Three great betas helped me out over the course of this story. Hakirby, A Blackwinged Bird, and Lady Ophelia 14. All of them deserve praise, especially Lady Ophelia, who beta'd eight out of ten chapters. I cannot tell you how much better this story is as a result of their efforts. _

_Thank you to my readers and especially my reviewers. If you've enjoyed reading this story half as much as I've enjoyed writing it then I can congratulate myself on a job well done. This has been a crap-load of fun. _

_With that, _Hunter/Killer: Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Going Forward

Sam was in his hotel bed, having just awakened from a fitful, nightmare-plagued sleep. The sun wasn't up yet; the clock on the nightstand read 5:15 and in the other bed his brother was snoring gently.

He'd been released a few days ago, and it seemed like the nightmares hit him whenever he closed his eyes. It had been a week since the…conversation…and Sam was trying to keep it together. He'd finally gotten Dean to accept his help, for once admit that he needed it, and Sam had known then that the opportunity-cost would be that he didn't get to talk about his own issues. Telling Dean about the nightmares would only prevent his older brother from putting this behind him. Dean had spent his whole life suffering in silence so that Sam could be the weak one; Sam could handle a few nightmares on his own.

It wasn't just the nightmares, though. Sometimes when Dean was standing over him, or moved suddenly, or when his voice hit that tone—the low, somber one he'd had during the fight—it was hard to suppress a flinch or a shiver. So far he thought he'd managed to keep Dean in the dark about it (an accomplishment in itself). Since he knew the fears were irrational, he was confident that they would go away on their own. He just hadn't expected it to take more than a couple of days.

Then there was the guilt. He knew that was irrational too. Even if the demon that killed his mother and girlfriend had been coming after him, it didn't make it _his_ fault they were dead, any more than Sam's injuries were Dean's fault. But it was hard. Hard because maybe Ansius was right, and psychics like _him_ allowed things like _that_ to enter the world. It made sense, right? And if that was true, maybe it _would_ be better if he wasn't around.

He closed his eyes and pushed the thoughts away. What was so hard about this? Ansius was a demon. Demons lied. And even when they weren't lying, they could still be wrong. He had no reason, _none_, to believe that as a result of his existence, evil things could come into the world. Plus, even if it was true, killing lots of them had to make up for it.

It didn't comfort him. It never did. Which only demonstrated all the more that talking to Dean wouldn't help anything. What was Dean going to say? What arguments could he make that Sam hadn't already thought of? It wouldn't help Sam, and it would only remind Dean of the things he'd said and done under Ansius' influence. No good would come of it.

He wanted to, to be honest. He wanted to _so badly_. He wanted to open up to Dean and tell him everything, to drop right back into the role of needy little brother. How pathetic was that? How ridiculous was it that Dean had spent his life dealing with his shit alone, and Sam could barely stand it for one goddamn week? No. He was committed. He wasn't going to say anything.

God, his ribs hurt. No wonder, he was lying on his side. He must have shifted in his sleep. He rolled onto his back but that just seemed to make it worse, like the pressure on his ribs had been all that was keeping the pain in check. He had to choke down a groan to avoid waking his brother. He needed another dose of painkillers.

Dean was dealing with everything pretty well, but he had gone a little overboard with the protectiveness thing of late. If Sam woke him, he'd insist on getting the drugs for him, on getting the water, on helping him sit up so he could take them. As with most of his emotions, Dean didn't vocalize his guilt. It was only detectable in his expressions and actions. It was annoying, but Sam understood it. Still, he didn't want to deal with it tonight. At least one of them should get some sleep.

He slowly, _slowly_, slid his legs out from under the covers and off the right edge of the bed. Sitting up required considerable effort and bracing with his uninjured left arm, but at least he was able to do it alone now, and without a wall to lean against. He let himself sit there for a moment, taking deep breaths. It hurt. It really hurt to move.

He stood, which wasn't as hard as sitting up, and was able to make his way to the bathroom quietly. He really should have just had some pills and water ready on the nightstand. That would have been _much_ easier.

Once inside he closed the door and leaned back against it. Walking was a chore. Breathing sucked too. He flicked on the lights and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust before stepping over to the sink and grabbing the pills from the counter.

He took two and washed them down with water. At least swallowing didn't hurt.

Inspecting himself in the bathroom mirror, he saw that he looked like shit. The contusions on his face were still healing, and Sam wondered if the only reason Dean hadn't noticed how little sleep he was getting was that the dark circles under his eyes were masked by the still-healing bruises. He still had a cast on his right forearm, and would for at least a couple more weeks, but he was no longer in the sling. Even through the t-shirt it was hard to miss how thin he'd gotten on hospital food and bed rest, and it had only been a few days. He wondered when he'd be able to start training again, and hoped he wouldn't have to reset his metabolism.

The pills started to take effect, a little numbing warmth spreading throughout his body. It gave him the courage to pull up his shirt and see how his ribs were healing. It was ugly. Whatever wasn't taped was black or purple, and it hurt just to look at. He let the shirt fall back over his torso.

That's when it happened.

It was just a flash—no headache, not a vision—just an image of Dean's black combat boot smashing heavily into his side, accompanied by the sick crunching sound of his ribs breaking and the memory of brilliant, searing pain. It was over in less than a second but it was undeniable. It was also scary as hell.

The wave of panic was difficult to suppress, and he leaned back against the door again, breathing deeply, trying to calm down. His heart refused to slow. The adrenaline was tying his insides in knots. He slowly slid to the ground, hugging his arms around his chest and waiting for it to pass.

_Gut-punch combination knocks the wind out of him._

JESUS! He shut his eyes against the images as if to block them out, but it wasn't like they were coming in through his eyes.

It was a moment before he realized that he knew what this was. He'd taken enough psychology at college to know about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He knew that flashbacks were a symptom. He'd just assumed it was the kind of thing that people suffered because they weren't used to terror and violence in their everyday life, so he'd dismissed the possibility that it would ever be a problem for him. Which made him stupid as well as pathetic.

_Elbow to the cheekbone and he's reeling._

Sam unconsciously brought his hands up, like he could ward off the blows. He hadn't been able to _then_, when it was happening for real, so it was pretty ridiculous to try to defend himself now. The humor didn't really sink in before—

_Fist across his jaw. A knee-strike to the abdomen. _

Sam pulled his legs in and curled up, trying to keep quiet, trying not to cry. It wouldn't stop. It just wouldn't _fucking stop_. He didn't see everything, just some of the highlights, but it went on for minutes, and it was more than enough to leave him near hyperventilation. He tried to think about other things. Recite the alphabet, backwards. State capitols. Multiplication tables. It didn't help at all. He had to see his arm being broken, he had to see the knife going in. It had to rob him of his self-control, had to take away his dignity before it relented.

It left him shuddering against the door with tears running down his face, gently rocking back and forth like a mental patient. Yeah, being the strong one was working out really fucking well.

There was some relief when it became clear that the attack was finally over. That feeling didn't last long. This messed everything up. Nightmares he could handle. The occasional twitch was manageable. Full-on theater-quality flashbacks were a serious problem.

What the hell was he going to do?

He had to tell Dean. He _couldn't_ tell Dean. Dean needed him to be strong. What the fuck was wrong with him that he couldn't deal with this? Dean had dealt with tons of stuff at least this bad and never complained. He'd never ended up with PTSD. God, what if he'd been right all along? What if Sam really _was_ so weak that even when Dean had it worse, Sam still needed more help?

Fuck that. Sam was strong. He stifled a laugh at the absurdity of assuring himself of that after falling apart in a hotel bathroom.

Then he nearly cried again. Because it wasn't fucking funny.

_Suck it up, man!_

He needed to go over his options, think this through rationally. Think strategically, like the soldier he'd been trained to be. Fight _fear _with _reason_. Fight _problems_ with _solutions_. Drugs, therapy, both, or neither. That's what it came down to. Anything but option four Dean would eventually notice, but ignoring this shit wasn't working. Of the first three, drugs were the one Sam could hide the longest. He'd have to find some way to get back to the hospital without Dean's supervision. What was he supposed to say? 'Hey, Dean, I can barely walk but I'm going to take the car out for a drive, be back in a couple hours.' Or, 'Can you give me a ride to the hospital and then not come in or ask any questions?' There was no way this was going to work and what the fuck was he supposed to—

The knock on the door nearly launched him through the ceiling.

----------

Dean had been standing there for about a minute and a half. He'd awakened to the sound of his brother's stifled gasps. He'd quietly made his way over, and had stopped just outside the bathroom. He'd stood there listening to the rhythmic thumping of Sam's back against the door. Dean surmised from the movement of the shadows in the light issuing from under the door that Sam was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth against it.

Dean had known that something was up. Sam couldn't suppress every flinch, couldn't hide the evidence of every nightmare. Still, he'd done a pretty good job if it was so bad he was reduced to crying in the bathroom. Dean hadn't seen that coming.

He didn't want to go in, didn't want to let Sam know that he was watching this, even through the door. Sam's life this last year had left him an open book, barely able to hide his pain even when he wasn't having nightmares or visions. Dean honestly didn't know how Sam did it, how he could survive with his heart out on his sleeve like that.

Dean had fulfilled his lifetime quota for embarrassment a week ago when he'd broken down and cried on his brother's shoulder. Or into his chest. Whatever. Lately it seemed like everything that happened was designed to tear Sam apart. If this was just catharsis, if this was just a little breakdown that had been a long time coming, then his little brother deserved some privacy.

But he knew that wasn't what this was. Sam wasn't sobbing, he was gasping. He wasn't heaving, he was rocking. Dean _hadn't_ taken college psychology, but he knew all about the psychological effects of violence. It was useful stuff to know. And even through the door it was easy to figure out what was going on.

He reached toward the door and hesitated. He knew he had the strength to do this. Sam had helped him reclaim it. He let familiar confidence wash over him and knocked.

----------

Sam scrambled to his feet, bracing against the door and biting back the pain. The medication helped, and he was glad he'd managed to get it down _before_ the flashbacks.

"Sam, are you alright in there?"

"Yeah, Dean. I'm fine," Sam called back, almost too quickly, slurring together the last two words. "I can go to the bathroom by myself, you know."

"_Sam_."

It was the cut-the-crap voice. The voice that told Sam that his brother already knew what was going on and was only asking to give Sam the opportunity to volunteer the truth. He got a guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach as he heard it, as he realized how bad he'd screwed this up.

"It's…it's not…" Sam stammered before he'd even figured out how to finish the sentence. Dean didn't give him time.

"Sam, open the door."

Sam grudgingly complied. He had to. Hiding wasn't helpful anymore. He unlocked the door and Dean pushed it open, while Sam sat down heavily on the toilet seat. Dean stood in the doorjamb and looked at him expectantly. Sam looked up at his brother. He thought he'd see guilt there, or pain, or judgment, but all he found was worry. He wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse. He looked down.

"It's not as bad as you think." Sam finally figured out what he'd been trying to say before.

Dean raised his eyebrows skeptically.

"Right now I think you had a breakdown in the bathroom. Did you have a breakdown in the bathroom?"

Sam nodded slowly.

"Well, so far it's exactly as bad as I think." Dean smirked and Sam choked on a laugh. Dean let that hang a minute before continuing. "What brought this on?"

Sam swallowed and considered lying, but his resolve failed.

"Flashback," Sam whispered. He chastised himself for his weakness. He waited for it, in the pause that followed, waited for Dean's façade to shatter, for all the healing to come undone. But Dean's expression didn't change at all.

"Okay," Dean said amicably.

"What?" Sam shook his head incredulously. How was 'okay' an appropriate response? And what the fuck did it mean? How was Dean's voice so goddamn calm when Sam was barely coherent?

"Okay. So we'll get you treatment." Dean gave him that look of reassuring confidence, the _nothing bad is going to happen_ look, that Sam hadn't seen in over a week. Sam felt a little better. Actually, he felt a lot better. If he'd known this was how Dean would take it… He was a little embarrassed that it was that easy. Sam took a deep breath.

"What about you? Are you okay? This…" Sam gestured generally at himself and the room. "This can't be easy to see."

"I'm fine, Sam."

Sam gave him the skeptical puppy-dog look. He could see Dean resisting its power.

"Seriously dude, I'm not that fragile."

Sam maintained the look. Dean sighed and looked away.

"Fine, I still feel like crap, guilty and whatever. But you know what would help? You not hiding this shit from me and focusing on getting better instead."

Sam hung his head and rubbed his neck absently with his left hand.

"I really screwed this up, didn't I?"

Dean put out his hand to help Sam up. After a moment Sam accepted it. They stood there, face to face. Dean held onto his brother's hand for a long moment.

"A week ago I was in a pretty dark place. I didn't want your help. I _needed it_, but I didn't want it. You forced me to take it, and I started feeling better. You showed me that this stuff doesn't have to go one-way." Dean looked into Sam's eyes with seriousness. "Your only mistake was forgetting that."

It almost moved Sam to tears. Then Dean rolled his eyes emphatically and let go of his brother's hand.

"Come on, Sammy, it's not _that_ touching. This is exactly why I shouldn't let you listen to that Emo crap."

Sam laughed. He couldn't help it.

"It's Sam, jerk."

"I'll call you what I want, bitch."

"Dude, you fell apart and cried _in my arms_," Sam chided.

"And if you ever tell anybody about that, I will fucking kill you. Slit your throat from ear to ear. I'm not even kidding."

Sam laughed again. His brother hadn't threatened violence since before the fight, and for just a moment, Sam could forget what had happened. It didn't last, but it made him believe that things were going to get better.

He followed his brother out of the bathroom, crawled into his own bed, and slept dreamlessly through the early hours of morning.

----------

For something like this there was no 'all better'. There was no day you could point to as the day you would be done healing, no point in your treatment where an issue was fully and finally resolved.

It was a week before Sam decided that talk-therapy wasn't for him, at least not when he couldn't be honest with the people he was talking to. Dean, for his part, made it clear that Sam could talk to him. That, plus some anti-anxiety drugs, got rid of the flashbacks and reduced the frequency of the nightmares.

On the physical front, Sam healed faster as he began to get more sleep. It was a couple of weeks before he could start training again, and a week more before he felt ready to start hunting. Expenses for that period used up almost all of the reward Jonas had given them, but it was more than worth it.

Dean didn't break down again, and he didn't go to therapy (that would have been a disaster). He also didn't stop blaming himself, though little by little, he was able to release _some _of his guilt. He worked hard at it, not for his own sake, but because it's what Sam wanted him to do. Sam's forgiveness, Sam's _absolution_, didn't feel like something he deserved, but he couldn't deny how much it meant. And he didn't want to imagine how screwed up he'd be without it.

Moreover, he tolerated the discussion of 'feelings' and allowed the occasional chick-flick moment. He even instigated a few when he felt Sam was holding something back for his sake. And when his brother was limping (in whatever way) and wouldn't lean on him willingly Dean gave the kid no choice. Turnabout was fair play.

The difference between a hunter and a killer is that one thing you've got left to fight for, that one thing that's more important than anything else, that makes violence a means rather than an end. The difference is the person who's there to catch you when the pain's too much and you're falling, the one for whom you know you can be strong even when you're dying inside.

Ansius' sin left him with nothing, with no one, and he became a monster. Sam and Dean had each other, and that's what kept them from crossing the line.

People say the road to recovery is long and hard. It's certainly long. But when you've got your brother to walk it with you, it's surprisingly easy.


End file.
